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

I will withdraw it and say 'faeces' if that would make senators happier. But you get the point—imagine dying that way.

As Senator Hanson-Young said in her contribution today, those fish are washing up on our beaches in Tasmania. They're polluting our waterways. Come down to Tasmania, the clean, green and clever state, but just don't go for a walk on the beach—you might tread on rotting salmon carcasses. This is the industry and the industrial activity in the pristine Macquarie Harbour—or it was pristine, before the salmon industry came in—this parliament wants to protect with special legislation.

What happened after they leaked these dossiers to me and we had a Senate inquiry into this 10 years ago? The industry went to war. They took each other to court. Huon Aquaculture took Tassal and the Tasmanian government to court to try and improve practices in Macquarie Harbour. The industry themselves recognised this problem. This is not the Greens or green groups, which is the way Senator Duniam and others try to label this. The industry themselves went to war over this, and nothing has come of it. The salmon industry formed an association to speak on behalf of themselves. They've been bought out, now, by foreign owned multinational companies, and they have plans to expand—not on our watch.

This legislation will, no doubt, pass today, because the Labor and Liberal parties don't care about the extinction of a species. They aren't prepared to listen to the science. But it's not going to stop here today. I haven't seen Australia's environment movement—and Senator McAllister is close to a lot of our environment groups in Australia, so she understands—so united on an issue as they are on this. I have never seen them so angry—and rightly so. After coming into this place year after year and fighting, lobbying and advocating for strong environment laws, what do they see? They see a government weaken environment laws for the salmon industry. You have done what many of us couldn't do—you, the Labor Party and the Prime Minister, have united Australia's environment movement behind this.

Expect this to be an election issue, an issue after the election and an issue in a balance-of-power arrangement. This is not going to go away. This is one of the stupidest strategic political decisions I've ever seen. This is actually, for me personally, coming up to 13 years in this place, the lowest moment, to see two major political parties get together to protect a polluting industry that's about to push a species to extinction. You will get contacted by your constituents. There will be a lot more than 20 workers you'll be hearing from. You'll get contacted all around the country about this. You'll get international pressure from international agencies who care about the world heritage values of Macquarie Harbour. The damage that will be done to the salmon industry and its workers from this will far outweigh any economic damage to the salmon industry from withdrawing from Macquarie Harbour.

I have a timeline here going back to when the salmon industry rapidly and aggressively expanded in Macquarie Harbour in 2012 without doing the required work. That was opposed by the Greens all those years ago in 2012. They have bulldozed all obstacles in their way, because of the cosy relationships they have as cronies with the Labor and Liberal parties at both state and federal levels. It stinks. The politics on this are as rotten as the stinking fish washing up on Tasmanian beaches, and Tasmanians and Australians can smell it.

But that's enough of the politics; let's just look at the science. I heard the Prime Minister, at a press conference the other day, say that a new report has been released by the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, at the University of Tasmania, saying that skate numbers are back to what they were in 2014, 11 years ago. Guess what? That is disputed. There is considerable uncertainty in the science. The most eminent scientists in this area have provided advice to the Threatened Species Scientific Committee that is different to that, and that's not to mention it was IMAS themselves that rang the bell on this, by saying this species is one extreme weather event away from extinction. That's what has triggered this whole process. That's the science.

Even if the Prime Minister was right and the numbers are back to what they were in 2014—and I hope he's right; I genuinely do—it is still endangered. The number of skate left in the harbour before the 2022 report was believed to be 1,200, and it's the only place left on earth where this dinosaur lives. And it is actually a dinosaur. That's why Macquarie Harbour has World Heritage value; it's because of this skate. There are 1,200 skate left, so, if the Prime Minister is right, we are still talking about an endangered species on the brink of extinction. That is the definition of 'endangered' under federal environment law—on the path to extinction. So that is meaningless.

He also talks about the money they have committed to oxygenation in Macquarie Harbour, turning a World Heritage harbour into a giant oxygenated fish tank. Well, guess what? Labor's own pilot study as to whether that will work doesn't finish till the end of this year, but they've already committed the money. How bloody cynical is that? And then he talks about the money they're putting into the captive breeding program. So there we go—we're going to have the maugean skate, one of the last dinosaurs left on this planet, in a bloody aquarium! These skates are fed a brew they don't get in the wild, and the females are laying eggs which hatch into baby skates, but they can't tell us whether the eggs had already been fertilised before the females came into captivity. This is what the Prime Minister has been saying to try and defend this toxic legislation that we have before us today.

I was feeling pretty speechless this morning; I really was. I can't tell you how angry and disappointed I am, after all my time in this place, to see this in the last moments of this parliament. You guys are a bunch of cynical, mean—I've got to try and control myself here—heartless, mongrel bastards.