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

ISH-WILSON () (): I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by Senator Wong to the question without notice asked by Senator Rice today relating to the swift parrot.

I also seek leave to table a cartoon by First Dog on the Moon, which I have circulated in the chamber.

Leave not granted.

Leave not granted ? That's a shame, because I think it's actually an important historical document. This cartoon encapsulates so well the absurdity and irony of the situation we currently find ourselves in. Last week we had National Threatened Species Day. Senators and MPs had their photos taken—warm and fuzzies—with an endangered animal. The department, again, talked up action on feral cats, something we've heard for five years. There was no mention of new coalmines being approved or of climate change—the elephant in the room—which we know is the No. 1 cause of species extinction.

At this time of extinction crisis and the government's zero extinction pledge, the two creatures most likely to go extinct on our watch, potentially and imminently, are the swift parrot and the maugean skate. What did we get for those? We found out that the scientists who worked so hard for so long on the swift parrot recovery plan weren't even consulted about the information released by the department last week. I want to quote from a scientist who has been working on this, Dr Dejan Stojanovic:

Despite mountains of evidence that logging in Tasmania is the key threat to swift parrots, this government is trying to scapegoat a tiny possum for its inability to stand up to the forest industry.

The conservation advice said clearly that habitat was to be protected outside Regional Forest Agreements, where we know most of the damage is being done.

And what about the maugean skate, down in Macquarie Harbour? According to First Dog—and I would actually agree with this, having spent a lot of time on this in recent months—it looks like the solution might be to create fish farms for maugean skates. Fish farms are responsible for the nitrogen loads and lack of oxygen which are the key contributors to the sad decline of the skate. And there we find ourselves in this irony, which would be funny if it weren't so serious.

I'll now hand over to Senator McKim who will take the remaining time for this contribution.