Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The government continues the rhetoric of no facts, no figures, just a narrative based on the construction of misinformation and half-truths. It pervades the whole of the government's agenda. It does not matter what the sector is: the mistruths, the construction of a new narrative based on nothing, continues. I want to talk about this matter of public importance and focus on the Abbott government's failure to protect World Heritage listed sites. In doing that, I want to talk about the government's application to the World Heritage Commission to delist a section of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage area.

As I said at the outset, we have come to expect from the Abbott government that a decision to delist—such as the one they have got before the World Heritage Committee at the moment—is not based on fact. It is not based on science, research or evidence. It is a party political decision designed to win votes, as there is again no evidence of any economic or social gain, despite their application saying there is. I had a look at their application to delist today. It is just eight pages long and it is full of absolutely nothing. There is no evidence, no rigour, no science—nothing.

In agreeing to list the extension of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area by 170,000 hectares, under the Gillard government, the World Heritage Commission had to satisfy themselves on a number of rigorous areas and they had to be convinced that that area was of outstanding universal value. When you look at the Gillard government's submission—some 28 pages long with facts, figures, photographs and absolute justification as to why that area should be listed—you just wonder what the government is up to. In making the decision to list this particular area, the committee acknowledged that the area included rare and largely intact ecosystems.

Peter Hitchcock—referred to by Senator Milne earlier—a prominent expert on World Heritage areas, states that the great majority of the forest proposed by the Abbott government for excision, about 90 per cent of it, has not been disturbed—we did not hear that today from the government—and that a small area, between five and six per cent, has been logged. That is not a statistic that you hear from the government. They try to convince the public that large tracts have been logged—and indeed we heard that from the government today—that the land is somehow worthless and we have all been duped.

The Prime Minister told a timber industry function in Canberra on 4 March—and I heard this myself—that he wanted to delist this area of country in Tasmania:

… because the area is not pristine forest. It is forest which has been logged. It is forest which has been degraded. In some cases, it is plantation timber that was actually planted to be logged.

Listening to that, you could believe that the Prime Minister was, in fact, referring to that whole area. But, of course, what we see again on display from the Abbott government—and, indeed, the Prime Minister himself—are the mistruths, the half-truths and the outright lies about what is really going on here.