Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation, (Senator Abetz), to a question without notice asked by Senator Milne today relating to the environmental impact of a proposed pulp mill in Tasmania.

I want to note the absolute contempt that the minister demonstrated for the people of Tasmania when he chose to answer in such a waffling and ill-considered way. The question to him was very specific. It was about the effluent from the Gunns pulp mill and its impact on the marine environment.

In particular, what I asked the minister was whether the government was concerned that, since Minister Turnbull had made his decision that he would only assess the pulp mill on preliminary documentation, a former senior CSIRO scientist and expert on oceanography had come out and said quite clearly that Gunns’ hydrodynamic modelling was misleading at best. He went on to say that Gunns’ prediction that effluent will not reach the shore is due to the combined effect of several modelling errors that disallow ocean layering and that this should be a wake-up call for both governments and the fishing and tourism industries. He also went on to document in considerable detail why Gunns got it wrong about where the effluent will end up. He demonstrated that, because Gunns failed to take into account the result of warming, the deficiencies in their modelling render it useless in determining where the effluent will end up and whether it will achieve the dilution and dispersion that is claimed.

We have known since the Wesley Vale pulp mill campaign in 1989 that Bass Strait does not flush, that it takes six months in the area off the Tamar for Bass Strait to be able to flush itself out. So, contrary to the view that you are going to get dispersion and dilution, you will actually get concentration of effluent. What Dr Godfrey has shown is that that effluent will blow up onto the shore of Bass Strait, into the Tamar River and into Commonwealth waters. For the minister to compare that with the emissions from the tailpipe of a vehicle—suggesting that, just as you would not want the emissions in your vehicle because they would poison you, so you would not want the emissions from a pulp mill in the river and that is why you would pump it out to sea—shows a complete contempt for the environment.

But the point I want to make today in moving this motion is that the minister has an extraordinary level of responsibility on his shoulders. We know, from the court case to which Minister Abetz referred, that Gunns had been in heavy consultation with Mr Early from the department and that they had sent a letter and a ‘draft assessment document’ designed ‘to assist the minister in making the necessary decisions under the EPBC Act’. In other words, Gunns was in there lobbying for the kind of assessment process it wanted and for the time line it wanted before the minister made his decision. Then—what a surprise!—the department, Mr Early, recommended exactly what Gunns wanted: a preliminary assessment based on existing documentation. And the advice that Mr Early gave the minister, which I am shocked about, says, ‘We didn’t believe that Gunns needed to do any more actual work in order to have proper assessment documentation which would enable the minister to make an informed decision.’ Now we know from several scientists and the Fishing Industry Council that Gunns’ information is misleading. That is why they withdrew from the RPDC process—because they could not meet standards; they could not provide the documentation that was being asked for. Now we have a Commonwealth minister saying that what he has got from Gunns will be adequate to assess this particular process.

The onus is very strongly on the government because, if a decision is made to approve this project and it pollutes Bass Strait, the effluent washes up into the Tamar and onto the shores of Bass Strait and it contaminates the fishery, then the responsibility is clearly on the shoulders of Minister Turnbull and his colleagues such as Minister Abetz. There will be a question for the federal government of liability for damages because of the air pollution in the Tamar Valley and the impact on tourism and the fine food and wine industries but, in particular, the impacts on the fishery and the marine environment, not to mention the natural environment, because dioxins bioaccumulate in the food chain and we are going to see that in the marine fishery. I am appalled that the government treats in such a pathetic manner the real concerns of the people of Tasmania about the pollution of Bass Strait. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.