The dominance of plantation forestry is also manifested in the pulp and paper sectors.

To see this, we need to appreciate that the Australian pulp-and-paper sector falls into four segments — packaging and industrial paper; printing and writing paper; newsprint; and household and sanitary paper (Table 4).

Source: ABARE 2008. Figures unadjusted after rounding

Government attention to printing and writing papers is analogous to the attention still focused on native-forest sawmilling. In fact, packaging papers dominate Australian paper production (60 per cent in volume terms), as they do globally. Since 1980, growth in Australia’s paper industry has concentrated entirely on packaging and industrial, and printing and writing papers, both growing at a strong average rate of 4 per cent per annum over this period (Figure 3). Whilst packaging and industrial-paper production has faltered since 2004, printing and writing-paper production continues on its long-term upward trend.

Source: ABARE Australian Commodity Statistics.

Despite the dominance and export success of packaging papers, printing and writing papers very much shape the public perception of Australia’s paper industry. Though this sector attracts most public attention, it is, in important ways, the odd man out in Australia’s paper industry. Because Australia’s monopoly producer of printing-and-writing paper (PaperlinX, formerly Amcor) uses little recycled fibre to make these papers (Table 5); wood is the main feedstock. For these papers, many producers prefer short-fibred hardwoods to long-fibred softwood (Higgens 1991). In Australia, native forests do supply plentiful and cheap short-fibred hardwood. But manufacturers of the other three paper-industry segments (packaging and industrial; newsprint; and household and sanitary) use mostly softwood (and so, in the Australian context, plantations) in their wood pulping to reap the strength benefits of longer fibres. Thus, as a whole, Australia’s paper producers rely on native forests for only 9 per cent of their production (using a wood-to-paper conversion of 3:1) (Table 5).

Source: Australian Plantation Products and Paper Industry Council (AP3) 2005

Note: Statistics are compiled from information collected from Australia’s six major paper producers and include imported pulp (20 per cent of pulp input) and imported recycled paper (4 per cent of recycled fibre input).

Increased paper recycling and increased softwood-pulping capacity have been the mainstays for Australia’s growing paper production. Since 1980, three new softwood-plantation pulpmills have been constructed in Australia: at Albury (1981), Maryvale (1984) and Tumut (2001). All three mills were constructed primarily for the domestic paper market, with output absorbed largely by growth in domestic paper consumption and import replacement.

Gunns’ proposed Tasmanian hardwood pulpmill breaks this pattern of domestic orientation. With PaperlinX having effectively stitched-up the domestic market through its monopoly production of printing-and-writing paper and controlling interests in imports of these paper grades, companies investing in new hardwood pulpmills are effectively forced into the roller-coaster global pulp market. In economic downturns, integrated pulp-and-paper producers scale back their paper production and offload their surplus pulp at cost price (Ajani 2007: 301–3). Survival for export-oriented pulpmills demands highly competitive projects from start-up. Gunns’ proposed Tasmanian pulpmill may not make the grade, even with the commercial benefits of a low-priced public native-forest resource and government subsidies on capital costs (Edwards 2008). Whilst resource conflicts have dominated Australia’s pulpmill debate over the past two decades, Australia’s concentrated printing-and-writing-paper sector and the nature of the global pulp-and-paper market also work against Australia securing a new hardwood pulpmill.