Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

If you don't like what's in the 29-plus chapters of the TPP, your opportunity to stop it is to vote against it in this chamber. We can vote against this enabling legislation, which would mean the whole thing falls apart. Minister, why would I want to prosecute the case in estimates next week, when the deal would have already been voted on and passed into law? Now is the opportunity for these issues to be raised. By the way, I actually haven't read the final text, because it has changed so many times. I was involved in this for the previous TPP. Senator Hanson-Young has done a fantastic job as our trade spokesperson since then. I am asking you now. I have looked at this and I'm looking at the detail right in front of me. I would like you and your advisers to tell me how this chapter will help us hold the Japanese government to account if they begin illegal commercial whaling in the Southern Ocean. Considering there is a section on mammal and cetacean protection, do we have binding agreements in here? What action can we take? Is it a state-to-state process? What is the process that we can use? Or is this environmental chapter, essentially, just platitudes? Is there nothing in here that we can actually use to bind another country's actions around the protection of mammals like whales, which, as you know, are very important to the Australian people?