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

This is an important and troubling week for our environment. Senators, it's worth contemplating how, in the middle of an extinction and biodiversity crisis, two of the planet's most iconic conservationists and earth defenders, Captain Paul Watson and Dr Bob Brown, are both facing potential jail sentences this week for simply protesting and protecting nature. Sadly, and infuriatingly, this potential imprisonment is a sign of our times. Captain Paul Watson has been detained in Greenland and will on Thursday face a potential extradition to Japan. Remember, it was Captain Paul Watson's anti-whaling activities in the Southern Ocean that ended Japan's illegal whaling, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice. We watched summer after summer in horror as they continued the barbaric practice of whaling, slaughtering these beautiful creatures in our Southern Ocean. It was the activists that put an end to that. Captain Paul Watson was on his way to our northern oceans to stop the slaughter of endangered fin whales. I thank our federal environment minister for condemning Japan's continuation of this whaling.

Dr Bob Brown, on Wednesday this week, is facing potential imprisonment for defending swift parrot habitat, one of the most critically endangered species in our nation. Protesting and protecting the environment shouldn't be illegal. If we have laws that are criminalising protesting our environment, then we need to change the laws, and we need to change them in this place because that's where it gets done.