Why’s Australia ‘paying’ Taib-linked group?

Clare Rewcastle Brown

Australian activists are wondering how the Ta Ann Group managed to develop powerful political links in Tasmania.

The multi-million-dollar Sarawakian business concern, Ta Ann Group, has managed to secure a grant from the Australian government to invest in a wood veneering factory in Tasmania.

Astonished observers and environmentalists, however, are wondering why the Australian government would pay the Sarawak Chief Minister Taib Mahmud-linked company to strip their forest?

Ta Ann is run by Taib’s cousin and well-known proxy, Hamid Sepawi. Sepawi owns a third of the company.

According to the Green Party, thus far no satisfactory answer has been provided.

When the project was awarded to Ta Ann, it was with the hope that it would breathe life into a struggling industry.

Ta Ann, when it opened the project, promised that the project would would rely on plantation forests and not extract wood from Tasmania’s remaining high conservation value forests.

Tasmania’s primary jungle has been classified as “high conservation value forests”.

But recent developments have revealed otherwise.

Ta Ann is now pressuring the government to give them access to primary jungle because the quality of plantation wood is not sufficient for their factory and they are demanding hardwood from the jungle.

Environmental group Huon Valley Environment Centre’ spokesman Jenny Webber said the Tasmanian government and Ta Ann were locked in logging the native Tasmanian forests.

“The Tasmanian government and Ta Ann are locking in the logging of native forests to meet a wood supply contract till 2027.

“High conservation value forests are being lost to feed Ta Ann’s mill, when they should be in a moratorium now,” she said.

Protests met with contempt

Webber and several activists yesterday boarded a Ta Ann boat laden with wood taken from Tasmania’s primary jungle.

They climbed to the top of the boat’s crane tower and chained themselves to it in a bid to draw attention to Ta Ann’s greedy plunder of their own forest.

The protesters are not alone in their anti-logging stance. There has been similar protests and actions like this one in the past, especially in the port areas.

These protests have been met with strong-armed tactics and contempt by the authorities.

Earlier this year, the Tasmanian Port Authority announced a 50-metre exclusion zone around all vessels exporting wood chip and veneer.

The move is seen as an attempt to prevent protests from holding up Ta Ann’s exports.

There is an overwhelming view among Australians that all logging of primary jungles should be stopped.

Much curiosity has risen as to how this Taib-linked company managed to develop such powerful political links in Tasmania, which is considered to be Australia’s remotest region.

The latest campaign in Tasmania against Ta Ann is a sign of the developing international awareness of Taib and how his greedy pacts with timber tycoons has stripped the Sarawak forest bare.

He and his cronies have spread their tentacles abroad, engaging in plunder across the world’s few remaining areas of virgin jungle.

Tasmania is developing a strong movement to prevent that from happening in its region.

Tasmanian environmentalists now join a legion of other activists across the globe who are against the logging of the world’s remaining forests and the injustices meted out to the indigenous communities in Sarawak and elsewhere.

Clare Rewcastle Brown is the founder/editor of Sarawak Report.