LET’S LOOK AT TWIGGY’S BACKGROUND
Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest has cultivated a careful persona as an enlightened businessman who is concerned about humane animal practices and the environment. But there are some relevant facts to consider when forming that view
ANDREW Forrest is a clever marketer of himself and his business model. He is portraying himself as the caring, humane animal welfare-focused businessman who will ensure that Brazilian food giant JBS’s bid for Huon Aquaculture is derailed.
Dr Forrest has been relentless in cultivating and playing to those Tasmanians that see JBS as the epitome of unethical business practices and who wish to see the Tasmanian aquaculture industry’s current practices radically reform, and its business model up-ended.
Dr Forrest even has a PhD in marine science. He takes out full-page advertisements spruiking his cause because his investment vehicle has skin in the game, being a large investor in Huon Aquaculture. Dr Forrest’s pitch to the shareholders of Huon Aquaculture, and to those Tasmanians who have declared war on the salmon industry as we know it, is that he is on the side of environmental best practice. He might be but, as always, the picture is more complex.
So what do we make of Dr Forrest and his “new age” enlightened rhetoric about salmon and aquaculture practices? One can accept it at face value, of course. But it has to be said, when one looks at his other activities, particularly in the mining sector and in his paternalistic attitude to Indigenous Australians, there is reason to suggest this energetic West Australian is deeply conservative.
Only last week Dr Forrest was quoted in the Financial Review as bemoaning “the wanton destruction of [Indigenous] culture and their livelihoods through welfare and royalties”. As the Financial Review pointed out, his comments come at a time when Dr Forrest and his iron ore company is likely to face a multibillion-dollar claim by the Yindjibarndi people which has won, after a 13-year legal battle against Dr Forrest’s interests, exclusive possession in native title of over 2700 sqkm in the Pilbara area of Western Australia.
As Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation (YAC) chief executive Michael Woodley said, Dr Forrest’s comments reflect his narrow view of the best interests of Indigenous Australians. Dr Forrest’s company has refused to join with Rio Tinto and BHP in supporting Indigenous representation in the federal parliament.
And Dr Forrest’s views on Indigenous dispossession and the scandalous multigenerational poverty, which is linked directly to the invasion and genocides by Europeans over 250 years, are redolent of 19th-century paternalism.
Dr
Forrest’s charity, the
Minderoo Foundation, known in this state for its support for lifting the age of smoking to 21, has successfully convinced the equally paternalist Coalition government to back the card that quarantines the vast bulk of Indigenous Australians’ income. The Guardian reported that a Senate inquiry last year received more than 100 submissions on the card, many of them the work of highly qualified researchers, and the overwhelming view was that the card was a failure. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, June Oscar, said the card was not “reasonable, necessary and proportionate”. And what of Dr Forrest the environmentalist businessman? It’s a stretch, according to the Tasmanian-born and educated Joe Aston, who writes the often acerbic and influential Rear Window column in the Financial Review. On August 17, Aston pointed to an inconvenient truth about how Dr Forrest makes his money – shipping iron ore to China for the making of steel. As Aston observed, in the 2019-2020 financial year alone “the manufacturing of steel in China with Fortescue’s iron ore caused 241 million tonnes of carbon emissions. That is more than all the combined annual emissions of Australia’s export thermal coal sector.
“And Fortescue did not spend one dollar offsetting those emissions. Not one red cent.”
And there’s more, as Aston observed, because Dr Forrest’s company, Fortescue, has trucks and trains that “consumed 641 million litres of diesel fuel in FY20”.
It didn’t offset those either, but it did bank $275m in the Australian government’s Fuel Tax Credit for Heavy Diesel Vehicles.
“Fortescue has been shipping ore for 13 years now, so the Forrest fortune is also a glorious monument to the dieselpowered internal combustion engine,” Aston wrote.
And let’s not forget Dr Forrest showed that Depression-era NSW premier Jack Lang was right when he once said: “Always back the horse named self-interest, son. It’ll be the only one trying.’’
Dr Forrest, along with his fellow mining magnate, Gina Rinehart, led the push against the Rudd government’s economically rational resource profits super tax in 2010.
His rhetoric was strident, comparing the Rudd government to becoming “communist”.
Dr Forrest’s PR machine must be well paid because it seems rarely a month goes by these days without some laudatory article or self-funded advertisement appearing somewhere to remind us all of just how enlightened this captain of industry really is, and that he is concerned to be seen as an environmental champion in Tasmania.
Shall we say Dr Forrest’s story is complex, so bear that in mind next time he spins a line about salmon in Tasmania. Hobart barrister Greg Barns SC is a human rights lawyer.
IT SEEMS RARELY A MONTH GOES BY … WITHOUT SOME LAUDATORY ARTICLE … APPEARING SOMEWHERE TO REMIND US ALL OF JUST HOW ENLIGHTENED THIS CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY REALLY IS