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

Any day now the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, will decide the fate of a beautiful patch of ancient rainforest in the Tarkine—rainforest that it has been declared has World Heritage values and rainforest that is threatened by foreign-owned mining company MMG, who wish to build a toxic tailings dam in the middle of this beautiful, ancient and unprotected rainforest.

I was lucky enough to visit this rainforest with my wife last weekend. I want to do a quick shout-out to the Bob Brown Foundation, who are doing tours for Tasmanians—in fact for any Australians who would like to go down and see this area that's threatened by foreign-owned mining company MMG. The only reason you can go down there and see this area is because 93 people protested to stop this destruction, and then were arrested. Then the Federal Court found that previous environment minister Sussan Ley had acted unlawfully by allowing the machines into this rainforest, by allowing the bulldozers and the excavators to go in there, without having properly assessed the environmental values of the area—in particular, the fact that the area is a breeding habitat for rare and critically endangered masked owls.

Well that is now being considered, and I would strongly urge Ms Plibersek, the environment minister, to reject MMG's proposal to build a toxic tailings dam in this beautiful, unprotected rainforest. In fact I urge her to go a step further and actually put this up for World Heritage listing, which should have happened 15 years ago. This is one of the last tracts of temperate rainforests left in the world, and it's largely unprotected. It's still subject to threat from mining and from forestry. It would deliver a huge bounty of jobs and wealth for the region if we properly protected it. This is a really good opportunity for Labor to get some runs on the board and show Tasmanians they care about our wild areas. (Time expired.)