Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Once again, the Labor Party are showing their true colours by teaming up with green activists to put Tasmanian aquaculture jobs under threat. The decision by the Minister for the Environment and Water to act on claims by the Bob Brown Foundation, the Australia Institute and the Albanese government funded Environmental Defenders Office against salmon farming on Tasmania's west coast reminds us once again who calls the tune when Labor are in office. For Tasmanian workers, this decision brings back bad memories of the Gillard government's environment minister coming down to Tasmania and doing deals with green activists and the Labor-Greens state government to decimate Tasmania's forest industry. That deal was a devastating betrayal of workers and the forest industry and a lowlight of a dark period for Tasmania in which Labor-Greens governments, federal and state, drove Tasmania's economy into the ground and sent a wave of Tasmanians interstate looking for work.

Tasmanians are sick and tired of Labor governments which try to destroy Tasmanian industries like forestry, mining and aquaculture every time they decide they need to play up to the inner-city green voters in Melbourne and Sydney. Time and again, we see the Labor and Greens political parties making it harder and harder for primary industries in Tasmania and across Australia. The result is that Australia ends up being forced to import from other countries where the environmental standards are nowhere near the standards that our terrific, job-creating industries here abide by. This Labor government needs to stop being dictated to by the Greens and stand up unequivocally for Tasmanian jobs, particularly Tasmanian jobs in the aquaculture industry on the west coast of Tasmania. These people deserve much better than this government.