Perin Davey (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Hansard source

Let's make no mistake as to why we're here today debating this bill, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Reconsiderations) Bill 2025. It is because the coalition has led on this issue. For the last almost 18 months, the coalition has been leading the way to support the salmon industry in Tasmania and in fact right across Australia. Labor has been brought kicking and screaming to the realisation that something needs to be done to protect the salmon industry. But, even in trying to do something right by the salmon industry, they're not getting it right. They can't do it. They can't bring themselves to do it. What Labor is trying to do with this bill today is to win votes, not to support a vital and crucial industry for the Tasmanian economy. The Prime Minister is about saving his own job, not about saving the Tasmanian salmon industry—and, let's face it, this bill is certainly not about saving the job of the Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek. This is just the last round in a long-running stoush between the Prime Minister and his environment minister and, to a wider extent, the clearly divided views within the Labor Party itself on environmental policy. This legislation is about factional games. It's about dealing with internal warfare, and it's about political fixes inside the Labor Party—a party absolutely desperate to cling to government at any cost.

The salmon industry in Tasmania has been dragged through green tape, red tape and sheer obfuscation by this government, and, at the heart of it, it is the workers who have been living with the uncertainty. It is the workers who have had concerns about their future and the future of the industry that they love and that they are rightly proud of, and it is about the future of those workers who secure such an important economic industry for Tasmania that is—let's face it—enjoyed by all Australians. Who doesn't love a good Aussie smoked salmon blini? The environment minister has been sitting on this review for 15 months. The industry has been living with that uncertainty for those 15 months.

Let's go back to why this review started. The Bob Brown Foundation, those doyens of consistency who are so consistent in their environmental beliefs that a wind farm on the mainland is fine but a wind farm in Tasmania is absolutely sacrilegious and cannot go ahead; the Australia Institute, the institute of balanced research; and then, of course, the Albanese government funded Environmental Defenders Office, the organisation that happily takes government money so that they can sue the government—they're the people who instigated the review of the salmon industry in Tasmania, an industry that has operated for years under environmental approvals. This industry has now been sitting with 15 months of uncertainty from a minister who has form for listening to the wrong people and choosing the wrong pathway, pathways that impact negatively not only the environment but communities and regional economies.

Look at the track record of this minister. She chose to listen to an Indigenous group that's not registered, not legislated and not formally recognised even by their own land councils on a very questionable submission about a very pretty native bee and put the kibosh on the Blayney gold mine, the McPhillamys gold mine. That's one example of this minister listening to the wrong group. We've seen the ongoing, dragged-out, start-again, stop-again—will we, won't we?—nature-positive legislation that was listed and then not listed and pulled. We've seen the Prime Minister withdraw the legislation from the Notice Paper, the environment minister put it back and then it was withdrawn again. Don't even get me started about this minister and how she listened to the views of environment groups over and above communities, industries, local government and even two of her state government colleague ministers to pursue water buybacks over and above supporting industry. My question to the Prime Minister is: if you can do it for the salmon industry, why can't you do it for the irrigation industry too? Protect the irrigation industry. This government is spending millions of dollars to rip water away from and to undermine the irrigation industry.

This bill that we are debating today doesn't even provide the salmon industry with the certainty they need or want. It doesn't prevent a future request for a review. It only gives them enough certainty to get from this side of the election to the other side of the election—and we've seen that from this government before. We've seen the Prime Minister say whatever it takes to win votes. He says, 'We won't touch your superannuation'—until he gets elected, and then he brings in a retrospective tax on unrealised gains for superannuation. He says, 'We won't touch your franking credits' on one side of the election, and then on the other side he makes those tweaks. He says, 'We will support the stage 3 tax cuts' on one side of the election, and then post the election he says, 'No, we won't; we'll change it and we'll throw it all on its head.' And we now learn that, over days of heated caucus meetings, the Prime Minister has again traded off: 'I'll say what I need to say on this side of the election to get those votes to try and win seats in Tasmania, but I will do nothing to give them long-term protection because I'll make an agreement with the environment minister to allow her to again pursue the creation of a federal environment protection agency, which will open up the capacity to review the salmon industry again.' So the Prime Minister has already begun to strip away what it looks like he's giving the salmon industry today through a dirty backroom deal with his minister.

The Tasmanian salmon industry deserves to be protected and isolated from future potentially endless reconsideration requests. So, too, I might add, do all the industries that are currently operating in Australia with environmental approvals and have been for multiple years. It is not fair on them that they always have this question mark hanging over their heads, that they could have their right to operate ripped out from under them on the whim of organisations like the Bob Brown Foundation or the EDO. As we've seen through the aforementioned Blayney goldmine exercise, trying to work with activist groups is an expensive and futile exercise.

Australia currently suffers from the second-highest level of green lawfare anywhere in the world. Our companies are under siege. In the interests of the overwhelming majority of Australians, who want us to have a high-functioning economy, who want us to have high levels of employment and who—unlike this government—want us to have a high productivity level which will help reduce the pressure on inflation, we need to stop enabling organisations like the EDO to trash our financial and social wellbeing as a nation, supposedly under the guise of doing it for the environment. We know that you are better off working with industry to maximise sustainability than trying to kill off industry, which is not a viable, long-term solution.

Let's not forget the poor red herring or, should I say, Maugean skate, in all of this—it's another fish, but not a fish. The poor skate has been used as the enemy of salmon farming. This totally ignores all the steps the industry is taking, and has taken, to improve water quality in Macquarie Harbour and to work to improve outcomes for the skate. I acknowledge that Senator Whish-Wilson, while saying that the science identifies that skate numbers have increased over the years, doesn't accept that that science is robust enough. But others have provided that modelling and indicated that the existence of the skate is not under threat exclusively from salmon farming. So let's look at what other threats there are. Instead of killing off an industry that is actively trying to take steps to help to protect the skate, why don't we work with them to identify what other threats there are? Maybe we can find workarounds there as well, because we need industries like the salmon industry, like broader primary industries—agricultural industries, livestock industries. We need our resources industries. We need projects like the McPhillamys goldmine to go ahead, because it is those industries that underpin the Australian economy, not the green lawfare industry.

I call on the government to support the amendments that we will be bringing forward, which will give the salmon industry the certainty that it deserves and needs, so that we can finally put this issue to bed and can get on with trying to increase productivity in Australia, focusing on relieving the cost-of-living pressures, focusing on relieving inflationary pressures and moving this country forward.