Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's with some bemusement that I make a contribution to this piece of legislation, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Reconsiderations) Bill 2025, given the debate that occurred in this chamber on a very similar piece of legislation that I introduced just a few weeks ago where the Labor contribution was scornful, scathing and not supportive. Yet this piece of legislation that we're seeing introduced today is effectively the same legislation except it's been made retrospective, which is something that I didn't want to do as someone who has thought about the way we should consider this and what we should do in this place. There was an action in this place; I understand that. I don't agree with the action that the Minister for the Environment and Water took. She took the word of a number of discredited environmental groups through a letter rather than a formal submission and made a decision that she didn't need to make, creating uncertainty that didn't need to be created for communities.

Labor opposed that piece of legislation which didn't have retrospectivity in it. The three-year timeframe after an approval is five years under Labor's legislation so it's longer, but what it doesn't do, which my bill did, was provide the opportunity for a state minister to come to federal government and offer some consideration. That's disappeared. So, while I was trying to put in place something that was responsible, that considered the environment over a longer period of time and that wanted a good result which would provide some security to companies that had invested sometimes millions of dollars in the environmental approval, the government have wiped all of that away to solve a political problem that they created themselves. I find it, let's say, bemusing that during the last debate the Labor contribution was so scornful of what we were trying to do, which was to try to provide a balance between industry and environment which is important in what we do.

We've heard a lot of very provocative debate and conversation here this morning about the circumstance in southern Tasmania, the very unfortunate circumstance where one of the businesses down there has been hit with a bacterial attack which they've struggled to get on top of. But the exaggeration about the impact of that, I have to say, is pretty breathtaking, and I've heard in recent contributions discussion about fish carcasses washing up on the beach in Hobart, all over Hobart and surrounding beaches, that is simply not true. There are no fish carcasses washing up on the beach in Hobart. There have been a couple of circumstances where people, quite vigilantly, have found some pieces of salmon that have broken down, but there are not fish carcasses washing up all over the beaches around Hobart. That's simply not true. But that's what we hear in this debate: misinformation, misleading information. In fact, some of the images that are being circulated as fact, as part of this debate now, are actually AI generated. They're not true.

Environmental groups are doing what they did in other recent cases where they have fabricated evidence: AI generated photographs to support their arguments. Yet this government continues to fund one of them, the Environmental Defenders Office, which had a multimillion-dollar fine imposed on them for their fabricated evidence to a court case. And here we have in Tasmania, right now, one of the organisations, the Bob Brown Foundation, again fabricating evidence. So we hear the Greens putting information forward in this debate that is simply false, creating concern for my communities and communities around Australia.

I won't accuse the Greens of lying, because that is unparliamentary, but I won't give them credit for knowing what they're talking about. They're just spreading the bunkum that's been fed to them by these dishonest, discredited environmental groups that are funded by this government. We all express our concerns about the utilisation of AI, and here it is being used to create misrepresentations of the salmon industry in Tasmania. It's a disgrace. Then, of course, we have to listen to the xenophobic rhetoric about the businesses that are operating.

Each of the three businesses in Tasmania started off as a family business. They grew their business. Yes, it grew over time and they sold their business to larger companies, which provides additional capacity to invest and build an important industry for Tasmania and it supports thousands of people working in the Tasmanian community. We want to see that continue sensibly, a sensible industry working with the environment.

The suggestion that these companies are looking to, in some way, degrade the environment and do it deliberately, which is the inference being made, dishonestly, by some in this chamber but certainly in the environmental movement—clean water is important to fish farming. Clean water means healthy fish.