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

This week is the 41st anniversary of the historic Franklin Dam decision, a High Court decision to protect the Franklin River for future generations forever. This is one of the world's great wild rivers, with one of the world's great whitewater rafting experiences, which brings hundreds of thousands of tourists to my home state of Tasmania. The Franklin Dam blockade saw the arrests of nearly 1,400 peaceful protesters. The prisons were full, and my predecessor in this place, Dr Bob Brown, famously was led from a prison cell to the Tasmanian parliament.

I wanted to raise this today because we are seeing a crackdown on protesters all around the world. In the last 20 years, we have seen 49 different pieces of legislation in this nation, more than two a year, to curb our rights for peaceful protests, and many of these pieces of legislation have been targeted at environmental protesters.

When I organised, with my colleagues in the Tasmanian Greens, the 30th-anniversary commemoration and celebration of the Franklin Dam protests and blockade, my clear memory was seeing at the bar the police who had arrested the protesters, drinking with the protesters and celebrating this occasion. Everybody agreed that it was a momentous and pivotal moment in history. Everybody agreed that it was the right thing to do. Remember, senators, that, while protesters may be treated as nuisances in today's headlines, they are always on the right side of history, and we need to now do more to support protesters, to support the environment and to support future generations. (Time expired)