Gunns extends an "Olive Branch" reports undiscerning ABC.

I dont often do dummy spits at Aunty. But really, reporting Gunns Letter to TAP...as an olive branch".

The dictionary defines an Olive Branch as a symbol of peace or goodwill.

I know enough ABC reporters to know that none of them would really regard Gunns letter as anything more than a stunt. Not an olive branch. Have another read of the letter Aunty. 

Why not just report the facts and let the viewers make up their own minds about the nature of Gunns advances toward pulp mill opponents. Why report the news just as the big logger would have liked?

Get some spine Tassy Aunty.

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I reccomend the folk in the ABC news room read My recent report on Gunns mobilisation of PR firm Pax Populus........... and this advice from a corporate spin doctor below

Goals for Dealing with Activist Groups

Copyright © 1998 by Peter M. Sandman

The first two goals rarely make sense; the other five are contenders.

1. To beat them. This is unlikely to work. Polarization is the activists’ game; they gain almost as much from losing as from winning.

2. To convince them. Another nonstarter. Activists have sound reasons (psychological, ideological, organizational, financial) not to let themselves be won over to your side.

3. To show that you’re listening. In the theater of risk controversy, your role requires you to make significant concessions to the activists in Act One. In Act Two the audience decides you’ve given enough and suffered enough (though the activists may disagree), and lets you get on with the job.

4. To make them exclude themselves. Most activists hope you will exclude them, giving them an easy issue on which to polarize. If you keep offering them opportunities to collaborate, they may decide to exclude themselves rather than risk looking co-opted.

5. To lure them into collaboration. Offered the chance to collaborate, activists sometimes judge that the risk of looking co-opted is lower than the risk of looking unreasonable and being marginalized.

6. To get them to abandon the issue. Faced with the choice between marginalization (offending their moderate wing) and co-optation (offending their extremist wing), activists sometimes opt for a different issue and a less canny opponent.

7. To help them beat you. A risk controversy stabilizes only when the community decides you can be trusted or decides you don’t have to be trusted because the activists have you under control. The second is a lot easier than the first. Letting them take credit for your good behavior is less harmful than watching them attack your good behavior.....................

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If Gunns have as they claim, made significant alterations which improve their pulp mill project design, then i would have thought the correct process would have been for Gunns to submit that information to the relevant state or federal depts. and for those Govt. depts. to then make that new information available for public perusal. Nothing more, nothing less.