Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We just heard that so-called green tape is clogging business in this country. Does that not tell you exactly where the government and coalition are coming from in this effort that is underway, driven by the Business Council of Australia? What has been put to COAG came straight from the Business Council of Australia; it is almost the exact language that they put forward. Let us not pretend that the whole purpose here is not anything other than, as Senator Birmingham just talked about, getting development off the ground and, as the government says, streamlining—and read for 'streamlining' 'fast-tracking'. That is what we are talking about here.

We know, those of us in the environment movement around the country, that when you hear the word 'streamlining' it means 'fast-tracking'. Anyone who wants to know what that means should just look at the pulp mill process in Tasmania, where we had so-called 'streamlining'. The then Premier of Tasmania, Paul Lennon, took the pulp mill out of the agreed assessment process because Gunns said that it did not suit them. They knew that they would not pass that process. It was taken out, and what did the Commonwealth do? Did it declare the whole thing null and void? Not on your life! Where is the compliance and enforcement? Tasmanians were put through years and years of division in the state and complete nonsense out of the state government in its assessment of the impacts on the marine environment.

It was the Commonwealth which at least came to the rescue on the marine environment, to actually have the capacity to look at genuine impacts. If it had been left up to the Tasmanian government, it would have been the pulp mill task force and the ridiculous claims by the pulp mill task force that there would be a level of dispersion and dilution of the effluent into Bass Strait. The reason they gave for that—and I will never forget the interview from the pulp mill task force—was that a dinghy that came off a fishing boat washed up on Flinders Island, and that proved that there was a sufficient current to get rid of effluent into Bass Strait.

That is the kind of nonsense you get if you rely on state governments. The fact is that, right around the country, environment departments in state governments have been so hollowed out that there is hardly any expertise left. Anyone who thinks that a state government would ask the Commonwealth to assess one of their projects that they want to be fast-tracked as a project of state significance, just get real. The whole point here is that they want to fast-track it for themselves and take away any kind of environmental protection.

That is where we are with the Tarkine in Tasmania. I know that my colleagues have talked about James Price Point and that they have talked about threatened species and so on around the country. I particularly want to talk about the Tarkine, where you have the Tasmanian Premier totally opposed to the National Heritage listing of the Tarkine, in spite of the fact that the Heritage Council recommended that 434,000 hectares be listed because it contained 'extensive, high-quality wilderness' and because 'largely undisturbed tracts of cool temperate rainforest are extremely rare worldwide'.

That is from the Heritage Council. But what do we have? We have the Tasmanian Premier and Deputy Premier saying that there is no way the state government would compromise Tasmania's mining potential, including heavily mineralised areas on the north-west and west coasts, and so they want all of those mine proposals in the Tarkine to proceed. And who would think for a single minute that if the assessment of the Tarkine were handed over to the Tasmanian government there would be anything like what the Heritage Council has recommended to the minister be protected?

That is the situation we now have. We have it at James Price Point, where the Premier of Western Australia wants the Kimberley opened up for development and wants it to come out of James Price Point. We see exactly the same thing in Victoria with the logging of the habitat of the Leadbeater's possum and in New South Wales with the koala, and elsewhere around the country. And of course there is the Great Barrier Reef, not to mention the Coorong and of course Kangaroo Island in South Australia. We are seeing it right around the country. The whole point here is that Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister, is going to abandon the legacy of the Hawke government, abandon that for Labor and give it away in order to please the Business Council of Australia and to fast-track the extinction of species. That is what this will do: fast-track the extinction of species and the loss of Australia's environmental values around the country and the fabulous habitats and places people love. It is a case of Labor and the coalition getting together to abandon 30 years of environmental protection for destruction, and that is a disgrace. (Time expired)