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

That finding still stands. The interjecting Senator Abetz knows that. And it was on a technical point in a higher court of law that the costs were awarded at the end of the day. The fact is that the public response—because of Australians’ love of forests and wildlife—has enabled that bill to be paid to Forestry Tasmania. What I also should say here and make very clear is that we announced that that money was being raised much more rapidly than I could have believed, within three days. Had we not put a stop to it, the funds raised would have been multiples of that quarter of a million dollars for forests and wildlife in Australia. It was absolutely stunning and heart-warming to see the response of the Australian people against the decisions made by those in power who should know better, like Senator Abetz. What I was explaining before his last lot of interjections was that he took, in his own self-interest as well as that of his party and the then Howard government, a political decision to have highly paid QCs and others sit in a court where they were not able to take part in the debate on evidence before the Federal Court but ran up huge bills. The minister did this knowingly right down the line, and at the end of the day the cost to the public has been $436,000—double the amount of costs that I had to pay. You note that there is no quibble from Senator Abetz on this score. What I repeat here today is that Senator Abetz is morally obliged and ethically obliged to repay that money to the Australian people which he plundered out of their funds when he was minister, for a partisan political purpose, to foster the logging of Wielangta.