Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The minister has said if there are impacts on wildlife—that includes in an RFA area—he will be doing an assessment. I ask him: will he confirm that to the committee? I am good at reading headshaking—and he has been advised that, no, he will not confirm that and he has been advised that, no, he will not be doing that assessment. Because what the minister knows is that the forests of Tasmania are in regional forest agreement areas. They were signed over to destruction by the Prime Minister’s signature in November 1997. We have now got to the horrendous situation where, as Senator Milne made clear in question time today, ammonium nitrate explosives are being used—the very thing that is being banned, because of terrorism, in this country except under licence. They are being licensed under the authority of the Prime Minister effectively through the regional forest agreement to blow up the biggest trees in the Southern Hemisphere such as those in the Styx Valley and the World Heritage value Upper Florentine Valley.

Here we have a pulp mill which is going, for two decades or more, to continue to erode the national estate and potentially World Heritage value forests of north-east Tasmania. The minister has every right to be hanging his head because he knows that this amendment is to make abundantly clear that he cannot do an assessment of those forests under a regional forest agreement and, therefore, the wildlife in those forests under a regional forest agreement.

I will go to one species that he knows very well—that is, the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle. Forestry Tasmania itself, with Melbourne university, has done a study of this exact area in north-east Tasmania—the Bass component of Tasmanian forestry operations—which will be the resource for Gunns’s proposed pulp mill. Those studying it found that it has a 65 per cent chance of going to extinction. This is one of the world’s six biggest raptors or eagles. It is bigger than the mainland variety. If Gunns’s logging proceeds—and this pulp mill will make sure of it, ladies and gentlemen of the Senate—that 65 per cent chance of extinction becomes a 99 per cent chance of extinction. The wedge-tailed eagle has had it. Make no mistake about this, what we are voting on here is the destruction of species in this great nation of ours through the unnecessary logging of what is left of our native forest estate in a country which has 1½ million hectares of plantations and does not need to cut native forests to provide wood for building, paper or whatever it might be. And this government knows it.

This government, through this particular amendment, is saying: ‘We will not allow ourselves to—we want the parliament to ensure that we cannot—look at the forests in assessing that pulp mill or the forest furnaces which are coming down the line.’ The State of the environment report, which was produced by the minister yesterday, was scathing on the loss of biodiversity in this country which continues to grow—that is, on the species going to extinction in this nation when that should have been stopped long ago. And here we have a minister for the environment in a government which is deliberately legislating to destroy ancient ecosystems upon which species, from the great wedge-tail of Tasmania down to minute species within the firmament of the forest, depend—legislating to destroy their habitat, destroy their creation, destroy their existence on this planet. Can you believe it?

You, as this government, are concocting a situation where you are legislating to put blinkers on to blind yourselves to this deliberate destruction of what is left of the fastness of creatures which make this country, which are the essence of this country. You are legislating knowing that, by doing so, you are going to send them to destruction for a Gunns pulp mill. You are legislating that you cannot look at that process, knowing that we are in a period of unprecedented extinction of species due to human activity. This government is legislating to prevent interference in that extinction process which has been signed into law by the regional forest agreement by Prime Minister Howard.

Then along comes the Stern report which says, ‘Go from the environmental aspect and look at the economic aspect.’ When you do the figures, you will find that we are getting paid $10 or $15 a tonne by Gunns for what they take out of the forest; the huge amount they leave there they pay nothing for. Yet under a carbon trading system—which we are told, and we know, the world is going to have, and which even the Prime Minister assents to now—those forests would be worth two, three or four times that amount if left standing. So you would send them to destruction now when, in a decade or two, standing, they would be worth four times as much, and you would still have the biological amenity and the safety for species they provide, and all the economic activity which would come out of tourists wanting to visit what is left of real wild forests on the planet.

I went for a walk the other morning—a beautiful sunny Saturday morning—with a little tourist operator from St Helens, into the Blue Tier, into a coupe to be targeted by Gunns in the next few months. It was sensational: huge Antarctic ferns, centuries old—some nudging a millennium old. And at the end of this 20-minute walk, which would delight the heart of anybody on the planet, we came to the Big Tree. It has a cave inside it. You walk in one side, it opens out like a small ballroom and you can walk out the other side. It is 19 or 20 metres in circumference at shoulder level around the base. And do you know, fellow senators, what they are going to do with that, in the next few months—possibly before we come back here? They are going to get another mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil and blow it up. And this minister is legislating so that he cannot look at that, and so that Gunns can continue to do that and then feed it into their pulp mill. I get a little of the feeling for the environment that legislators must have felt in other parliaments for wicked things that have happened to human beings in the past.

So: we have 15 minutes left in this debate before it is guillotined. I will sit down. I will let it go. This minister has sat on his hands. He is not even going to look at those forests; this government will not. This Prime Minister has knowingly wiped his hands, like Pontius Pilate, of what is about to befall, is befalling and will befall the forest heritage of this nation and the world, and all the creatures that live in it. It is appalling beyond words. And it is all so unnecessary. Yet here we have legislation to say not only that the minister should not look at it, but that he cannot. This is a straitjacket of the government’s own introduction through law. Can you believe it?