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

I thank those who have contributed to this debate. To comment on that contribution from Senator Abetz, the view that the ABC in some way or another concocted this to be a pre-election program of course is absurd. Anybody else but Senator Abetz would know that. You might ask, Senator Abetz: who was it, then, that got involved in rigging the Black River bombing two days before the 1993 election? It had a big impact on that election and came from the forest industry. The culprits were never found, of course, but it was a massive, direct and planned attack on the Greens, who were doing extremely well at that time—it was nothing to do with the Greens. But Senator Abetz has never called for an inquiry into that.

When we get real evidence of a planned effort to intervene in politics and to set people up and it comes from the philosophical side that Senator Abetz is on, you never hear the call for an inquiry. But, when the Australian Broadcasting Corporation comes up with a program like this, which has obviously been a long time in the making, he immediately fits it out as being political intervention. That is politics, but it does nothing for the argument, and nor was there any cogent argument from Senator Abetz—or Senator Colbeck or Senator O’Brien—that this inquiry that Senator Milne and I are requesting the Senate refer to the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee should not go ahead. The argument, of course, that it is pre-election is very much in their minds, both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party. They do not want an inquiry in the run to the election because they do not want a proper public expose of the processes and the cover-ups that have occurred as citizens like Dr Bleaney and scientists like Marcus Scammell have tried to get assistance, the assistance they should have got, from departments, governments and industry to try to work out what is affecting the ecosystems downstream of the plantations in the George River basin.

This is a classic case of an area where the Senate inquiry would do best. It is not that a Senate inquiry might uncover the causal agent—the actual toxin—but it is that a Senate inquiry can see where there are gaps and where there are questions to be answered and it can put those recommendations to government so that the information can be found out. The other thing about a Senate inquiry is that it can open doors. When you hear that the health department in Tasmania was given a report from Dr Bleaney in 2008 and it had not been opened until very recent times, you wonder how on earth you can have advocates now saying that all the documents from the scientists that she has been working with should be given for peer review but we keep a closed door on the information held by government, not least by industry, because there is a lockdown on information in Tasmania.

Senator O’Brien referred to the smearing of the reputation of Tasmania. The logging industry in Tasmania, with its destruction of ecosystems, including the habitat of rare and endangered species, with its pollution of waterways and with its massive contribution—in fact, more than the rest of the Tasmanian economy put together—to greenhouse gas pollution of the atmosphere, which is all unpaid for and at great cost to taxpayers, including more than $1 billion in handouts from state and federal governments in the last two decades, has of itself been the biggest cause of the smearing of the reputation of Tasmania that one can discover. This industry needs cleaning up; this industry needs opening up; this industry needs to pay its way for the damage it does. But you get cover-up and you get the sort of situation we see now where citizens are trying to find out what it is that ails them or their water or their industries and they simply get condemned, by implication, that they do not have peer review. It is said that all their information should be handed to the loaded, biased industry boffins in government, like Minister Llewellyn—one of the most hopeless and destructive. Talk about smirching the reputation of Tasmania! Can there ever have been a minister who has so shepherded the destruction of what is good for Tasmania? There was the clean, green image and the right of new clean, green and organic agriculture, which finds itself in the vicinity of highly polluting industries like forestry, which sprays atrazine and other toxins into the air and the water catchments. The use of 1080 by this industry brought dreadful publicity worldwide and it continues in Tasmania. It results in the long and painful death of marsupial species, including those that are rare and endangered.

The smearing of the reputation of Tasmania by that industry and the damage done by it—so high-handedly and arrogantly, with weak and spineless politicians in Tasmania from the big parties shepherding it all away—speaks for itself. It is time we got past that. No wonder the Greens are indeed at 29 per cent, when you distribute preferences in the polls in Tasmania. No wonder people are looking for an alternative. No wonder they are looking for more security about the future economy of Tasmania through the Greens. We have seen such serial failure by Labor and Liberal governments.

I come back to the case in point. We do need to find out what is in the water of not only the St Helens catchments but also other catchments across Tasmania. It comes from a change in the natural ecosystems which provide clean, fresh water to people downstream, farmlands and aquatic industries. We should be monitoring that all the way, but you cannot have that where you have closed industries, secrecy and failure of openness to the public. There is the forest industry and Forestry Tasmania. Corporations like Gunns, of course, have a very unenviable record in high-handedness, obfuscation and cover-up when the public have a right to know.

Senator Colbeck said that the Greens have said that we should get out of native forests and move to plantations. He is a new player, relatively speaking, in this place. He sits on the second row and is unable to get the story straight. The Greens have always condemned the destruction of native forests and their replacement with plantations since the 1970s when the woodchip industry brought such carnage to Tasmania, and we continue to do so. If the Greens had had their say, there would be no Eucalyptus nitens plantations replacing old-growth forests and native forests in the George River catchment and we would have a North East Highlands National Park instead of the continued erosion and destruction at a rapid rate of the native forest ecosystems and the habitats of rare and endangered species in the hinterland of St Helens, Swansea, Bicheno and the whole of the east coast of Tasmania.

One only has to think about the rapid destruction of the habitat of the swift parrot, the fastest parrot on earth. This parrot is now down to a thousand pairs, which are just now preparing, after their breeding season in Tasmania, to come back to the mainland. Forestry Tasmania, aided by the parties of Senator Abetz and Senator O’Brien, is in the business of destroying the nesting sites which this rare species depends upon if it is going to survive. You cannot destroy the nursery if you are going to move to recover such a species from destruction.

I laud Dr Alison Bleaney, Dr Marcus Scammell and all the other scientists who have had their work displayed by Australian Story. This is not just a story of citizens who had a hunch, a worry or a phobia. This is a story backed up by the work of more than half-a-dozen laboratories in Australia and New Zealand. It is a story of scientists who are prepared to go on the record and talk about a toxin which is killing human cells in the laboratory. It does not necessarily mean that it will be injurious to health if it is drunk in water coming down a river, but given that there is a toxin which is going to kill skin and liver cells, is it not right that this Senate should hold an inquiry to find out if it is affecting the citizens of St Helens and citizens further downstream, and not only concerning Eucalyptus nitens, whether it is growing in plantations or naturally on the mainland—because it does not occur naturally in Tasmania—but other eucalypt species as well? Of course we should be. Of course it is a time for the airing of the very serious concerns that people have about their health, their natural environment and their future ability to be free of fear from the hidden toxins which so far have not been exactly identified.

And what if you are a blue mussel farmer in the George River catchment and you have a flood pulse come down the river and 90 per cent of your stock is killed? Don’t you have a right to be worried about that? And do you worry when it is just dismissed by a health authority who says, ‘Oh, it is fresh water’? Of course you do, and of course, for the sake of those small businesses, we should be having an inquiry into this. This is an abrogation of responsibility by the Labor and Liberal parties. Senator Heffernan has called for this Senate inquiry and has called, responsibly, for a scientific inquiry; but he has not prevailed with his Liberal colleagues. I will say this of Senator Heffernan: he has taken a keen interest in plantations, whether they be in Tasmania or on the mainland, not only because of their potential indirect effects, as in this case, on water systems, but also because of the direct effects, such as the plantations taking water out of catchments further down. He is concerned about this issue but, of course, in our party system the person who knows the most is very often the person who has the least say when it comes to an issue like having an inquiry.

Senator Heffernan has called for an inquiry, and I think he is right. Senator Abetz says, ‘We oppose an inquiry.’ I think he is wrong. Senator Colbeck says, ‘Let us not have an inquiry.’ I think he is wrong. Senator O’Brien says, ‘We won’t support an inquiry; we’ll put it off until some other time.’ We have heard that before, and he is wrong as well. Senator Milne and I are serious about this inquiry. It is the logical and responsible thing for political representatives, not least those of us from Tasmania, to be undertaking. For the citizens and the industries and scientists involved it is an abrogation of responsibility by the Labor and Liberal parties that they are going to block a simple inquiry into a very serious matter.

Question put:

That the motion (Senator Bob Brown’s) be agreed to.