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

The foreign-owned Tasmanian salmon farming industry and our state's Premier are on the warpath, determined to let nothing, not even the extinction of a wild and endangered marine species, get in the way of their corporate profiteering. Macquarie Harbour is the last place on earth you will find the ancient and critically endangered maugean skate. The salmon industry have claimed they don't support or believe the best scientific advice showing that salmon farming is a key contributor to poor dissolved oxygen levels in the harbour, which are pushing the skate to extinction, or the recommendation that salmon biomass must be significantly reduced to give the skate the best possible chance of survival. Apparently, it differs from the industry's own science—presumably paid for by the salmon industry—but you'd expect them to say that, wouldn't you?

The expansion of industrial salmon farming on the west coast of Tasmania in Macquarie Harbour should never have been allowed in 2012. The Greens opposed this from day 1. We have been consistent in our concerns and warnings on threatened species and the damage to World Heritage values in the area. We didn't trust a totally captured state government to properly regulate the industry, especially given the significant uncertainties that existed in our understanding of this complex body of water. History has proven us right, and it wasn't just the Greens who warned of this.

The salmon industry themselves went to war in 2017 over this issue, fighting themselves in court over poor industry practices and lax regulation, with the CEO of Huon Aquaculture at the time warning the harbour was a ticking time bomb for endangered skate if fish biomass was not reduced and properly regulated. She also said if the regulator didn't do its job then it would ruin it for all of them and there would be an impact on the whole industry and its future in the harbour. She has been proven right also.

How convenient and frustrating it is that now the salmon industry—with their new industry association and corporate owners—and their full-throated supporters, like Mr Gavin Pearce and Jeremy Rockliff, are attempting to politicise this old, sad affair and deflect blame onto others, like the federal Minister for the Environment and Water and hardworking scientists within the Threatened Species Scientific Committee, who are just doing their jobs protecting our environment—and I am glad of that. I have been urging various environment ministers and the committee to act on this for years.

Any regrettable loss of jobs or economic impacts that may flow from stopping a species going extinct on the west coast of Tasmania are a mess entirely of the making of the salmon industry and the state government—not that I've heard a single word from the Tasmanian Premier, West Coast mayor Shane Pitt or the cheerleaders in the Liberal Party acknowledging this fact. Nor have I heard any public commentary on the dangers of an extinction event to the future sales of the industry, its brand, the local tourism economy or even Brand Tasmania. In fact, disappointingly, I've heard not a public word of worry, reflection or acknowledgement of the sad reality we face with the imminent extinction of a species that has been with us for millions of years. I look forward to this public sentiment being forthcoming.

The salmon industry has proposed an untested oxygen bubble machine to avoid removing fish from the harbour, but they recently misled us on this, saying that it had federal government support. We found soon after that that was not the case. There is a captive breeding program to try and breed the ancient skate in a tank and, if it works—and that's a big 'if'—to put any last surviving skate in ponds or back into the wild. But where? The only place on the planet that was found was Macquarie Harbour, which is too polluted to put the skate back into.

How sad is it that it has gotten to this? A critically endangered species is being pushed to the brink of extinction by an introduced, invasive species, the Atlantic salmon. It was totally avoidable, and it was all because one industry had too much power over government and the regulator—and it still does. It seems like the story of Tasmania. What is next—the swift parrot? Is it the handfish? This is one of the great moral challenges of our time, and we can't afford to fail. The world is watching. I implore the federal government to continue their efforts to save the skate.