Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Cameron suggests that the Greens will never have that problem, and I can respond by saying that it is my experience in the Greens that we genuinely ask ourselves the question: 'What are people in 50 or 100 years going to think about the decisions that we make today?' and I am proud that we ask ourselves that question on a regular basis—very proud indeed.

In the short time that is left to me in this debate, I also want to talk about prosperity in the context of environmental protection and environmental remediation. You can see Tasmania as a classic example where, as to our protected areas—those areas where, as a state parliament, and, at times, as a Commonwealth parliament and, in fact, at times, as far up as the United Nations—we have said, 'No; there are certain things that you cannot do in some of our higher-status protected areas, like our World Heritage area and like our national parks.' We have said: 'No, you cannot develop in those areas, if you are a private developer; you cannot log in some of those areas or mine in some of those areas.' And look at our tourism industry now. Do you know what the primary driver of that is? This is from Tourism Tasmania research. Do you know what the primary reason is that people make a decision to visit Tasmania? It is our wilderness. It is nearly double the next most relevant reason why people choose to visit Tasmania. It is our protected areas that are underpinning our tourism boom at the moment. We have gone from a time when the then Liberal Premier Robin Gray described the Franklin River as 'a brown, leach-ridden ditch' to a time now when our wilderness areas and our protected areas are underpinning the fastest-growing industry sector in Tasmania. I remind members that, when the Greens were predicting over previous decades that tourism was going to be one of our foundation economic sectors, we were laughed at loudly by the Labor and Liberal parties of the day.

This choice between jobs and environmental protection that is put to the Australian people so often by particularly the conservative side of politics is a false one. We do not have to make that choice because there are many circumstances in which environmental protection, extended out to environmental remediation, can generate many, many thousands of jobs in this country—and it has. This is not about jobs; this is about developers. This is about the big mining companies that this current government is so beholden to. It is about the big forestry that certainly the Tasmanian government is so beholden to. It is about the big frackers and a range of other people whose primary objective is to profit from environmental destruction.

One day—and it will be a great day when this occurs—there will be a majority of members in this chamber who actually understand that it is a false choice we are presented with between jobs and environmental protection. They will understand that environmental protection and environmental remediation go hand in hand with prosperity and meaningful work. They will understand that, rather than allowing developers to run rampant over our environment, destroy our ecology and compromise opportunities and prosperity for future generations, it is the job of this parliament to stand up for environmental protection in Australia and make sure that our children and grandchildren get a fair crack at the prosperity that so many of us are lucky to have today.