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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister representing the Minister for the Environment and Water (Senator Wong) to a question without notice I asked today relating to endangered species.

There's a reason that this government signed up to a zero extinction target last year. It is because we know that we face an extinction crisis. Right before us now and before this minister—and I would say that this will be one of her biggest tests as environment minister—we have a clear-cut example. There is a species, the ancient maugean skate, that is found in only one place on earth, and that is in Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania's West Coast. It is found in only one place. We know the species has declined so rapidly because of industrial salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour and a lack of oxygen in its natural harbour.

The scientific advice that came out earlier this year warned that there was a lack of juvenile recruitment in the harbour, which means they weren't finding any young skate. The scientists who studied this skate said that they believed it was one extreme weather event away from extinction. It is that fragile. So this is a test case for the minister. Having just signed up to a zero-extinction pledge, will you back in the science—the conservation advice—that was only recently upgraded?

I questioned the head of the Threatened Species Scientific Committee recently at estimates on how confident they were in their scientific advice. They said that the three best scientists that had been studying this skate for decades have upgraded their advice. It is to immediately destock salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour and do everything they possibly can to increase the oxygen load in that water if the skate is going to have a chance of survival. At first, the minister and the department were very clear. They released the advice that the minister wrote to the Tasmanian Premier at the time. The response—a predictable response from any Tasmanian state government—was: 'We will put the industry and jobs before the environment.' We've seen Labor senators in this place and Minister Watt go down to Tasmania recently and have a love-in with the salmon industry. How long has it taken? Suddenly, they are going wobbly at the knees about whether they will do what's required to prevent a species from going extinct.

I asked the minister in question time today: how many jobs on the west coast is the maugean skate worth? That's a very difficult question to answer, but it is the moral and political question that is before us. If we do get the predicted marine heatwaves which are well on the way, especially off the east coast of Tasmania, and we get the kind of events that we've seen in Macquarie Harbour—by the way, for those who don't know the history of Macquarie Harbour, when industrial expansion of the salmon industry occurred there in 2012, the Greens and others opposed it. We said that it is a very complex body of water and that we have no historical records of what may come down the line if we farm salmon in this harbour, which by the way adjoins a World Heritage area and has an endangered species in it, the maugean skate. But no-one listened to us.

Sure enough, the industry itself went to war over the lack of regulation by the Tasmanian state government. They took each other to court over the lack of regulation. The CEO of Huon Aquaculture at the time more or less said that this harbour is a ticking time bomb for the maugean skate. And what have we found? Nine years later, that is exactly what the scientific advice is telling us. Yet, with this clear-cut example of a government with a moral duty to do everything they possibly can to prevent this species from going extinct, they're starting to go wobbly at the knees. We're hearing in here: 'We're friends with the aquaculture industry. We're going to go for a consultation. We're going to do two months of consultation.' That will take us past the time that the scientists are telling us the skate is most at risk of an extinction. And we hear: 'We're going to have a captive breeding program. We're going to try to take the skate out of Macquarie Harbour and breed it in a tank.' God only knows where we're going to put it back because it's only found in one place on earth!

How ironic and how sad that Atlantic salmon, which belongs in the Atlantic, is displacing a creature that's been with us since the age of the dinosaurs. That's what 2023 is now, and we don't seem to care. The Greens care. I say to Tasmanians and Australians and anyone else around the world that, if you care about this species' imminent extinction, go on the minister's website. Consultation begins today for two months. Let the government know you want them to do everything they possibly can to save the maugean skate.

Question agreed to.