Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, I had the very great honour and privilege to table in this House this morning a petition organised by Friends of the Bay and other coastal protection groups that engaged more than 4000 Tasmanians in conversations about the future of our marine environment and attempts to privatise that marine environment by the industrial finfish farming industry. Friends of the Bay was formed this year by leading Australian surfer, the late Mick Lawrence, who died in June. Mick was very well loved right around the island. He was a champion of our coastline. He took on ‘Big Salmon’ and worked to protect Bass Strait from seismic testing along with all the marine life that Bass Strait sustains. More than 4000 people have had their say about Petuna’s plans to expand into the waters off Yellow Bluff in Storm Bay. Included in those signatures are the Change.org signatures.
The efforts to have all these signatures on that petition were started by Mick Lawrence some 18 months ago. It has been an incredible power of work right around those communities that live in and around Storm Bay and beyond. The proposed Petuna lease area is approximately 3 kilometres from the entrance to Frederick Henry Bay and about 6 kilometres east‑southeast from Clifton Beach, prime surfing waters.
Storm Bay, I hope many members agree, is one of our most precious marine environments. Together with Frederick Henry Bay and Norfolk Bay, it forms a unique, unspoiled and beautiful waterway. The petitioners are requesting that we here in the Legislative Council, on behalf of our communities, work to stop further expansion of on-water fish farms in those bays, make sure that the industry is moving onshore and that its systems are closed‑loop which, as we know, is much more environmentally sustainable, much closer to world’s best practice and much more likely to have a social licence. The petitioners also want to make sure that industrial finfish farming is providing long-term and sustainable jobs; we know that this industry is rapidly mechanising.
On Sunday night, around 170 people packed into the Sandford Hall to hear speakers including author and historian Richard Flanagan, independent scientist and former CEO of the renowned Derwent Estuary project, Christine Coughanowr, who also rang the alarm bells some three or four years ago about plans to massively expand finfish farming in Storm Bay and others. The audience heard details of Petuna’s plans to increase the biomass into the north of Storm Bay with about 50 open-net pens. That is 50 filth-producing pens near the pristine waters of Norfolk Bay. The event was organised by Friends of the Bays with support from other community groups opposed to the salmon industry’s expansion, including neighbours of fish farms, the Tasmanian Marine Protection, Tasman Peninsula Marine Protection and the statewide members of the peak body, the Tasmanian Alliance for Marine Protection.
The proposed lease area is home to the endangered red handfish which is already clutching precariously to survival. The audience saw a film of stunning reef off Slopen Island and that reef would be significantly negatively affected should those pens go in. The audience also saw the damage the salmon industry has done to waters in and around Huon Island. The meeting was shown a full container of a poisonous anaesthetic used by the salmon industry to treat diseased salmon that washed up on Roaring Beach, Tasman Peninsula, as an example of careless salmon industry practices that impact on coastal community.
Petunia has acknowledged that it needs to have a community conversation. It is pretty clear that the community that lives in and around Storm Bay has made its views on fish farm expansion into those waters very clear. Petuna says it needs to undertake an environmental impact assessment. Well, it is very well understood what a high concentration of polluting fish farm pens does to the marine environment. It fills it up with fish excrement and we have seen the enormously damaging impact of unchecked finfish farming in Macquarie Harbour, which is driving a species that has existed for billions of years on this planet, to extinction.
The environmental impacts of this industry are well understood and there is also a growing community of concern right around this island about the salmon industry’s plans for expansion. It is well understood that multi-national salmon corporations that pay no tax. I might remind members, have the ear of our Premier, Jeremy Rockliff. JBS executives have paid $4000 a ticket to get the Premier’s ear. Standing up to that are communities, always in this place: to defend what they love; to defend public inshore waters; to defend their place.
I think Mick Lawrence would approve very strongly of this Council taking action in response to that petition. I also think that this petition has put government on notice again that communities will not stand for being trampled. They have not been consulted. These are their waters and they have a right to have a say. In closing, I think Mick Lawrence would be very proud of his mates.
