Tasmania’s forest peace deal inquiry has heard timber company Gunns was ‘going rogue’ in the early days of the process. Source: ABC
A former head of the company has been accused of making threatening phone calls to industry participants in the talks.
The allegations have emerged at an Upper House inquiry scrutinising the Tasmanian Forests Agreement Bill. The agreement is designed to end the state’s forest wars by protecting half a million hectares of trees from logging.
The former chairman of the Forest Industries Association of Tasmania (FIAT), Julian Amos, said the threats happened when the peace talks began a couple of years.
“My CEO Terry Edwards had received a number of phone calls from the CEO of Gunns which could only be called threatening, with respect to his involvement in this process and FIAT’s involvement in the process,” he told the inquiry.
“From our point of view, if I can put it in the vernacular, Gunns was going rogue.
“In other words they weren’t acting as an industry participant anymore, they were acting solely in their own interests.”
Amos said the former chief executive of the National Association of Forest Industries, Allan Hansard, received similar phone calls.
The head of Gunns at the time was Greg L’Estrange. He told the ABC the phone calls took place when the company was a FIAT member. L’Estrange said Gunns provided about two-thirds of the lobby group’s income and felt entitled to express a view on the peace process. Gunns severed its ties with FIAT in September 2010.
