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

I thank my fellow Tasmanian senators from the Liberal Party for bringing this forward, because there is nothing more urgent than the extinction of a species. We know that only in one place on earth, in Macquarie Harbour, a creature that's been with us since the age of the dinosaurs is one marine heatwave away from extinction. That's according to the scientists that have studied it for decades. We know the conservation advice from the best scientists studying the skate. They've told us that, this summer, salmon farming, which is the primary cause of the skate's demise, clear as daylight, needed to be removed from the harbour, but that hasn't happened. It hasn't happened under the Tasmanian Liberals; it hasn't happened under the federal Labor party.

I say to everyone who will listen that every environmental problem you can think of is first and foremost a political problem, because only politics can solve it, and there is no bigger environmental problem than the potential extinction of a species. So how are we going to solve this problem? We could follow the advice of the scientists. We could actually show that we care about the extinction of a species. I agree with Senator Urquhart—we should stop politicising this issue and get on with the job of protecting the maugean skate. We could also provide a guarantee to the workers on the West Coast that they won't be out of a job if salmon farming comes to an end, which is what the science tells us. I want to give a shout-out to the Greens candidates in Tasmania during the state election, who've released a very sensible policy to make sure that the 60 workers that are employed in Macquarie Harbour have a jobs guarantee. They released that; it's gone down very well.

We know that we could also pay for that by taxing the salmon industry. In 2022, over $1 billion of gross state value was contributed from the salmon industry, and they don't pay a cent of tax. Big multinationals—why don't they pay tax? The Liberal government has finally got the industry to cost recovery, and they did have a policy to actually get a return for the Tasmanian people, but they walked that back on the weekend. There will be no new levies and no new taxes on the salmon industry. The Greens would introduce a 10 per cent royalty on the salmon industry, pay to relocate these workers and find them jobs, and pay for— (Time expired)