Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Madam Speaker, I move –
That the House take note of the following matter: protecting lutruwita/Tasmania’s environment.
I rise to talk about an important Matter of Public Importance, the notion of protecting lutruwita/Tasmania’s environment. In this new collaborative, agreeable parliament – putting aside our most recent debate – I know there is one thing we can do: agree on the value and iconic nature of Tasmania’s environment. I think we can all agree on the need to protect it. Clearly, the difference when it comes to this issue is: what exactly is protection, real protection, genuine protection that actually delivers an outcome for the environment? What does it take to achieve it?
Yesterday 17 organisations rallied on the Parliament Lawns with hundreds of people. They wrote an open letter to the Premier and the Leader of the Labor Opposition. They said to Jeremy Rockliff and Dean Winter:
Please stop worsening the climate and biodiversity crises. We call on you and members of the new Tasmanian parliament to take real action to protect our climate and Tasmania’s forests, rivers, oceans, animals and wilderness. Everyone’s wellbeing depends on the protection of our island home’s unique environment. There is no time to lose.
There is an impressive collection of community groups: the Bob Brown Foundation, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, the Tasmanian Climate Collective, the Wilderness Society, Environment Tasmania, Tasmanian National Parks Association, the Environment Society, the Australia Institute, the Neighbours of Fishfarming, Tasmanian Conservation Trust, Animal Liberation Tasmania, The Tree Projects, Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, Blue Derby Wild, Tasmanian Wilderness Guides Association, Tasmanian Peninsula Marine Protection and Tasmanian Marine Protection Alliance. What this demonstrates is that there is a groundswell of support for protecting the environment. Indeed, during the election the biggest mass gathering of public during the election calling for policy change was a rally of well over 3,000 people calling for an end to native forest logging.
The crossbench is the biggest it has been in a long time, most with concerns articulated in the election campaign about either environmental issues or industries that are causing deep environmental harm. Despite this, we are seeing not only a maintenance of the status quo but, from the government, proposals to worsen things. We still have ongoing native forest logging and burning – burns in incredibly carbon‑dense forest – which is our greatest carbon emitter in this state. These are burns still killing giant trees. We had a situation just recently where a giant tree was burnt in a Forestry Tasmania so‑called ‘regeneration burn’. It reminds us of the death of El Grande so many years ago.
When it comes to aquaculture, we have issues in terms of the health of rivers and coastal waters.
We have a lack of action when it comes to the ethical and proper treatment of our wildlife. The native duck hunting season is open until 12 June. We have had tens of thousands of native ducks slaughtered. There will be tens of thousands more. Tasmanian industry is still using the abhorrent practice of using 1080 poison to kill our wildlife.
It gets worse. Not only is government refusing to act when it comes to these challenges, refusing to remove fish farms from critical areas that are suffering, still maintaining growth plans for the industry, but they are proposing to wind things backwards. There is the 40,000 hectares of high‑conservation‑value forests that even the industry does not support. We now also have this ludicrous situation of retrospectively changing the coastal policy so that a major industrial development can go ahead.
There is a resurgence of an alliance between Aboriginal and conservation groups. The utterly woeful Aboriginal heritage Protection Act is a consistent failure of this government. A review over three years ago now showed that it does not provide protection for Aboriginal heritage. The problems are legislative failure, such as the Aboriginal Heritage Act, regulatory failure, the EPA the Forest Practices Authority. We need an Environmental Protection Authority with teeth.
We do not even have a standalone climate change minister in this Cabinet anymore. As a parliament, we need the government to step up and take action to protect our environment.
