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

Very recently, I spoke at a rally in north-west Tasmania to stop bulldozers and to stop the Tarkine being trashed and logged. The story I told—and it occurred to me just prior to my speaking at the rally—was about standing in my cellar door in Tasmania, in the Tamar Valley, nearly 10 years ago. I spoke to a gentleman who was a friend of my father's. This was a gentleman who grew up with my father in north-east Tasmania around Scottsdale. He went on to be a Liberal Party minister. In fact, he was the forestry minister in Tasmania for a long period of time. He came in to my cellar door because he knew that I was an active campaigner against one of the world's biggest pulp mills being built in the Tamar Valley. He said to me, 'Peter, I know why you want to defend your valley and why you don't want to see this place industrialised, but you've got to understand that there's towns across Tasmania, especially in rural Tasmania, that need this project.' He said: 'Look at where I live now. The town's got absolutely nothing going for it. It's an ex-mining town. It's a forestry town. The forestry industry's collapsed. It's got high unemployment. It's got absolutely no future without a pulp mill.'

I reflected on this, looking back 10 years to when we had this discussion. It was quite ironic that, when I found myself talking in the north-west of Tasmania, I reflected on this town where this gentleman lived. It was called Derby, in north-east Tasmania. Derby is a fascinating story, and it is a really positive story for us to tell about the potential of a future for Tasmania. Derby now is on the international map for international mountain biking. In fact, very shortly, next month, the Enduro World Series challenge race, which also goes to Aspen, in Colorado, and of course Whistler, in Canada, and a number of other places around the world is coming to Derby.

What started this was federal funding delivered by the Greens and Labor under the Tasmanian forest agreement. The planning started back in the mid-2000s, but it was not until 2012, until the forestry industry collapsed and Gunns went into liquidation, that the forestry agreement process was negotiated and $100 million was put into Tasmania's economy to diversify the economy, to retrain workers from the forestry industry and to build new futures. A chunk of that money, not that much, went into developing some world-class mountain bike tracks in this old town of Derby.

Let me call it a once-forgotten town. It definitely was a forgotten town. But now you cannot buy any real estate there. Every business in the town has been bought up. Investors have gone in there. They have done up all the pubs. All the shops have been done up. And there is still a massive demand for more people to invest in Derby because thousands of people are now going there to experience one of the world's best mountain bike tracks. The Enduro challenge lands next month. Two thousand riders and their crews will be descending on this small town in north-east Tasmania—2,000 riders and a hundred journalists.

This area was also saved, shall I say, by the Greens and communities from being logged only 18 months ago, even while it was being developed as a mountain bike track. I am planning to go there with my wife over Easter for what is called the Blue Derby Pods tour, which is an ecotour where you sleep in tree houses that they have made; you ride all day; they feed you; they give you a bit of grog; and hopefully it is an all-round fantastic experience.

There are some really awesome things going on in north-east Tasmania. I see the hipsters getting off the plane from Melbourne on Friday night when I arrive back from Canberra. They all have their laptops. They are doing stuff. They go and pick up their mountain bikes off the racks. They go to stay in Launceston. They visit other parts in the north-east. There is a big tourism boom going on around this.

When I was standing in the north-west, I thought of a still-forgotten town, a place called Waratah, which is almost a mirror image of what Derby used to be. It is also a forgotten town, ex mining, ex forestry, with not much going for it, but it is on the edge of one of the world's last wilderness areas of temperate rainforest—unspoilt temperate rainforest—which is the Tarkine. It is an area that has been recognised for its heritage values. It got emergency national heritage listing, and it has been recognised officially for its World Heritage values, but it is still unprotected—500,000 hectares of rainforest which unfortunately, any day now, is going to see the bulldozers go in. Virgin rainforest, trees hundreds of years old that have seen the times and breathed in the air during the reign of Napoleon, during the discoveries of the Americas, during the discovery of Australia—these hundreds-of-years-old trees—are going to be bulldozed and chipped for no reason at all except that the Liberal government in Tasmania is looking for political conflict going into a state election.

Of these forests, two coupes are on the Franklin River—and I have been out to the Tarkine nearly every month in the last six months. I was there with my daughter on the weekend. We went to the Franklin coupes. I was there only months before that collecting—Acting Deputy President Back, you will be pleased to know—with a wildlife expert, a blue lobster, a massive, giant, freshwater crayfish, Astacopsis gouldi. The only place in the world where these male blue lobsters are found is in the Franklin River catchment where we are about to see the trees and the old forests logged. As you know, Acting Deputy President, that species is endangered; it is listed because of disruption to its habitat right across Northern Tasmania. Once these forests go, the catchment area gets ruined; you get a large amount of debris and disturbance in the water; they cannot feed, and they die. And they are under significant pressure.

Not only that but these rainforests, these magnificent old trees, are homes to masked owls, to wedge-tailed eagles and to a whole range of species. Most importantly, the area is the last area left in Tasmania, in the world, where we have healthy, disease-free populations of the Tasmanian devil. This is the last bastion of the Tasmanian devil.

These coupes which have been sitting there idle for four years because there has been no mass clear-felling or logging in Tasmania since the forest agreement are being accessed because the Liberal government this week in Tasmania ripped up the Tasmanian forest agreement. The legislation passed the lower house. It has gone to the MLCs. This is not supported by the forest industry. The Tasmanian forest industry, the loggers and even the unions are saying they do not support ripping up this peace agreement. The environmentalists, who sat down with the unions and the forestry industry for four excruciating years, came up with this deal. It did not suit anyone. No-one was happy with it. Not enough area was protected for environmentalists in Tasmania and the loggers did not get as much as they wanted; nevertheless, the deal was signed. Now it has been ripped up.

These forests and hundreds of thousands of hectares of World Heritage value forests—rainforest, old-growth forest that has never seen human activity that are the heart and soul of Tasmania, and the reason why thousands of tourists flock to Tasmania—are going to be sacrificed on the altar of one man's political ambition: Guy Barnett, the Liberal minister in Tasmania. He knows he is up for a hard fight in his state election. The Robson rotation can be a cruel thing. He knows that in every different polling booth he is not necessarily going to be on the top of the ticket for the Liberals; it is rotated. So he is doing this to get his name out there. He is deliberately inciting conflict in these forests for no good economic reasons. They cannot sell the trees. The forestry industry do not want these areas logged. He wants a fight going into the election. Then we have the rest of the forest agreement—another 152 coups in the Tarkine which will be up for grabs if we do not make a stand in the next few weeks and defend these forests.

I would urge all Tasmanians listening and who care about the forests—and there are tens of thousands of them—to contact their MLCs in Tasmania and make sure they let them know that ripping up this forest agreement is not good enough. These forests should be protected. They are there for future generations. They are worth more in the ground. They are worth more for jobs. They are worth more for the environment and the creatures that live in these forests. Let's find a better way forward. Remember Blue Derby; it is a success. Tasmania has so much more potential if we think outside the box.