The Rise and Fall of Gunns Ltd

The story of Tasmania’s most controversial forestry giant, the corruption that gave it power and the forces that brought it down.

At its peak, Gunns Ltd had a market value of $1 billion, was listed on the ASX 200, was the largest employer in the state of Tasmania and was its largest private landowner. Most of its profits came from woodchipping, mainly from clear-felled old-growth forests. A pulp mill in Tasmania’s Tamar Valley was central to its expansion plans. Gunns’ collapse in 2012 was a major national news story, as was the arrest of its CEO for insider trading.

Quentin Beresford illuminates for the first time the dark corners of the Gunns empire and how it was embedded in an anti-democratic and corrupt system of power supported by both main parties, business and unions. Simmering opposition to Gunns and all it stood for ramped up into an environmental campaign not seen since the Franklin Dam protests.

Fearless and forensic in its analysis, the book shows that Tasmania’s decades-long quest to industrialise nature fails every time.