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

ISH-WILSON () (): I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by Senator Wong to the question without notice asked by Senator Rice today relating to the swift parrot.

I also seek leave to table a cartoon by First Dog on the Moon, which I have circulated in the chamber.

Leave not granted.

Leave not granted ? That's a shame, because I think it's actually an important historical document. This cartoon encapsulates so well the absurdity and irony of the situation we currently find ourselves in. Last week we had National Threatened Species Day. Senators and MPs had their photos taken—warm and fuzzies—with an endangered animal. The department, again, talked up action on feral cats, something we've heard for five years. There was no mention of new coalmines being approved or of climate change—the elephant in the room—which we know is the No. 1 cause of species extinction.

At this time of extinction crisis and the government's zero extinction pledge, the two creatures most likely to go extinct on our watch, potentially and imminently, are the swift parrot and the maugean skate. What did we get for those? We found out that the scientists who worked so hard for so long on the swift parrot recovery plan weren't even consulted about the information released by the department last week. I want to quote from a scientist who has been working on this, Dr Dejan Stojanovic:

Despite mountains of evidence that logging in Tasmania is the key threat to swift parrots, this government is trying to scapegoat a tiny possum for its inability to stand up to the forest industry.

The conservation advice said clearly that habitat was to be protected outside Regional Forest Agreements, where we know most of the damage is being done.

And what about the maugean skate, down in Macquarie Harbour? According to First Dog—and I would actually agree with this, having spent a lot of time on this in recent months—it looks like the solution might be to create fish farms for maugean skates. Fish farms are responsible for the nitrogen loads and lack of oxygen which are the key contributors to the sad decline of the skate. And there we find ourselves in this irony, which would be funny if it weren't so serious.

I'll now hand over to Senator McKim who will take the remaining time for this contribution.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The swift parrot is a beautiful little bird. It's the fastest parrot in the world and it's being logged into extinction. There are just a few hundred left in the wild, which leaves that species in a perilous and parlous state. And what's the response from the Labor and Liberal parties? Support the industrial logging industry which is destroying swift parrot habitat! Tasmania's magnificent forests are home to this bird, one of only two migratory species of parrot in the world, along with the orange-bellied parrot.

The Labor and Liberal parties want to log its habitat. They have released a recovery plan which has not been signed off by the swift parrot recovery team and which fails abjectly to address the primary threat to the swift parrot, which is logging its habitat. The actions that Minister Plibersek should take, rather than just concentrating on media spin, are clear. If she wants to save the swift parrot, then she should ensure that its habitat is not destroyed by the native forest logging industry. And, while she's at it, if she wants to save the maugean skate, she should get the fish farms out of Macquarie Harbour. That's what we need to see.

Minister Plibersek has committed to zero extinctions, but what does she actually mean by that? Is she actually committed to maintaining viable populations of all existing species in the wild? Or does she think that a captive breeding program in a zoo is enough to meet that commitment? If it's the former, if she is committed to ensuring viable populations of all existing native species in the wild, then she's in as much trouble as the swift parrot and the maugean skate. That's because she's presiding over the slide of those two species into extinction. The swift parrot is being logged into extinction and the maugean skate is being driven into extinction by the industrial salmon industry in Tasmania. I urge people: do not buy Tasmanian salmon, because that is extinction salmon. That industry is knowingly driving the maugean skate, a relic species that has been in existence for many hundreds of millions of years, into extinction. We've got to do better. We must do better. End native-forest logging and get the fish farms out of Macquarie Harbour.

Question agreed to.