Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy President. I know it's difficult when people are called out for their folly. That's what has happened here, and people get a bit sensitive. So let's go to what I was actually going to talk about. The last speaker spoke about 'doing something'. My question was around changing the laws of the land that generate bad decisions. I said to the Minister representing the Minister for the Environment and Water: you've got laws and you keep telling us in question time that you must obey the law in relation to how you assess a goldmine, for example, or how you assess the salmon industry. Those industries are under threat. A goldmine was knocked on the head. It went through full state and environmental approvals and was still knocked on the head by the minister for the environment because of a small group of Indigenous Australians who did not like that proposal. We've been through the details in this chamber many times. But the minister, in defending that decision, said, 'Well, the law is the law.' The minister, in defending the risk posed to the Tasmanian salmon industry, which employs over 5,000 people in regional communities, said, 'The law is the law, and we must apply the law.'

Well, the law can be changed. The government is in charge of what comes onto the Senate Notice Paper, the order in which we debate legislation and the amendments that are put forward for this place to consider. The fact is that this government don't actually care about the workers they claim to care about. Otherwise, they'd be changing the laws relating to section 10 of the ATSIHP Act to protect those 800 workers who would get jobs out of the McPhillamys goldmine. They'd be changing the laws that have now put at risk the entire salmon industry in Tasmania, affecting 5,000 people. They would be changing the EPBC Act to actually protect those jobs. The fact that they are not doing that says that they don't think they need to because the decision is right.

If you obey to the letter the laws that are deployed and reach the decision you did, that will of course knock on the head the McPhillamys goldmine and the 800 jobs that would go with it, as well as the billion dollars of economic activity associated with it and the hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties revenue that would go into places like the state of New South Wales to pay for schools and hospitals. All of that is gone as a result of this decision, because of the law that we must obey. Instead of responding to that in the way that you would think a party that claims to be the friend of the worker would, they say, 'The law is the law, and we have to apply it.' It was put to me by the minister representing the minister for the environment that the laws before the parliament now relating to the Nature Positive plan would somehow address this. They wouldn't. They'd make it worse because the same laws would be in effect when it comes to the decisions we've made here.

The point is that this government talk a big game when it comes to addressing issues that face Australians, be it the cost of living, housing, job security, environmental protections or investor certainty, but nothing they have bowled up in the way of a legislative agenda will in any way address those issues. This is why the polls are trending in the direction that they are. It's because, frankly, Australians know a dodgy deal when they see one, and this is what they've got with this government. They cannot in any way trust what's being said. They can't take this government at their word in terms of what it promises to do.

The fact that they're willing to stick by the laws which have killed off projects like McPhillamys goldmine and which will probably kill off the salmon industry in Tasmania says everything about this government and what they actually think about regional jobs. As I said in my second supplementary question today, this government is more interested in ensuring that inner-city seats where the Greens are snapping at their heels are protected than in protecting the hundreds and thousands of workers whose jobs in regional Australia are at risk.

Question agreed to.