Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Madam Deputy Speaker, it is good to see you back in that role. Welcome and thank you.
It is getting harder and harder in this place to tell the difference between the Liberal and Labor parties. The member for Bass, Ms Finlay, who was speaking before, is new to the role of Environment, but they are the same talking points I have heard from her when she has been hammering home support for industries. The Labor Party and the Liberals talk strongly about supporting jobs and supporting the industries that depend on our natural environment, but they do not wrestle with the problem of the harms created to the natural environment and come up with a solution. The Greens have done the work over decades of proposing alternatives. The work we did in the state election campaign on the issue of the jobs in Strahan that are coming –
Member interjecting – How many was it?
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER – Order.
Dr WOODRUFF – It is the numbers that the industry have themselves put up far more than the recent numbers, where they were talking about 16 families. We did the work on the numbers of jobs in the industry and looking at an alternative for how the government can and should be supporting a sustainable pathway for workers from an industry that is dying. It needs to die fast in Macquarie Harbour because it is the direct cause of the imminent pathway to extinction of the Maugean skate.
Member interjecting – That is not true.
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER – Order.
Dr WOODRUFF – This is exactly what the scientists have told us. There are win‑win solutions here. The people who were outside parliament yesterday, at the start of parliament, are pointing out things that cannot be denied. Our tall trees are being chopped down, our globally significant, ancient, enormous eucalypt trees are being chopped down, put on the back of B-doubles, driven through the middle of Hobart and sent to the mainland for processing. This is a fact.
It is also a fact that the slaughterhouses in Tasmania are using cruel practices and causing the suffering of innocent animals every day in a systematic way. However, the government is proposing no solutions for these harms, the suffering being caused in a systematic way to the environment, to animals and to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community with such gross disrespect shown with the return of Aboriginal remains. These are linked issues.
The Australian Youth Coalition for Climate, Environment Tasmania and the Australia Institute have all been trying to propose solutions to the fact that this government is not taking action on reducing climate emissions in Tasmania. We have a good record, but we must do so much more. With a planet that is heating, every tenth of a degree the planet warms makes it so much harder for humans and other natural systems to survive in the years to come. When we have 1.5 degrees of heating by 2030, which is what the current predictions are, we are in a difficult place. It is why the Greens are wrestling with these issues. We recognise that they are not simple, but they are also not binary. It is not a binary – jobs or environment. It never was and it definitely is not now.
We must support regional communities when we know that there will be an end to native forest logging. There must be because it is the greatest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in Tasmania. Millions of tonnes a year, more than our transport and shipping fleets, come from the logging and incineration of Tasmania’s native forests. That must end. Other states and countries have ended it. It will end in Tasmania, which is why we need to be proposing solutions that are good for communities and good for the environment.
