Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Honourable Speaker, yesterday the government released its long-overdue multi-agency report into their response to last summer’s mass salmon mortality called Reflections and Learnings. Unfortunately, it was a whitewash. It didn’t land a single bit of blame or make any serious actions for genuine changes to prevent this happening again. Taking us back, we can never forget the months earlier this year when residents of the Huon and Channel and Bruny Island had to live through a hellish summer period. They had diseased stinking and rotting fish washing up on their shorelines that are usually beautifully clear. The government’s report into the event laid bare multiple failures of leadership and coordination between agencies, the effects on workers in the industry and their entirely inadequate response plan to deal with thousands of tonnes of dead fish.
The report did highlight communication breakdown between agencies, government and the community, and none of that is a surprise to the Greens. We were at beach meetings where thousands of people stood talking about their experiences, and we heard from them. No one in the government had bothered to tell them that the diseased fish carcasses and fat balls that their dogs were eating could have contained antibiotics. There was no information available to them about which companies were doing the clean-up.
The report peddled the myth that salmon companies communicated accurately and openly with the community, but we heard stories from people who saw obvious salmon staff clearing the beaches at Verona Sands and Randalls Bay, trying to clean up the mess, who were clearly identified with the company but refused to say who they worked for. It was only after public pressure and the immense scale of the disaster that Huon Aquaculture admitted it was their own workers.
Locals saw Eric Abetz and Janie Finley actively supporting the companies that caused the disaster, but they were nowhere to be seen on the beaches, talking to their own constituents and communities. Nine months on and there haven’t been any penalties applied to Huon or Tassal for what they did. Two mega multinational corporations who continue to operate as they wish in public waters on increasing scale with Liberal government agencies constantly running interference for them.
In March, the Greens called for a parliamentary inquiry into the summer mass mortality to get some real answers and to make sure there was change to prevent this happening again. But the Liberals and Labor Party stood together and voted it down.
Following that, the community group Neighbours of Fish Farms, who are truly on the frontline of that disaster, put forward a petition backing our calls for an investigation. Today, I tabled that petition that had nearly 2000 signatures of concerned locals. They want answers, they want changes.
Yesterday’s weak response from the government to what happened doesn’t pass their sniff test. The NRE’s report failed to identify the cause of why the disease spread across biosecurity zones. It didn’t acknowledge the salmonoid biosecurity program that was designed by the industry failed spectacularly and it resulted itself in the spread of Piscirickettsia salmonis between biosecurity zones.
However, most outrageously, the report yesterday didn’t offer any solutions to prevent it happening again this summer. The actions that we need to prevent disease spread is for companies to de-stock pens, to fallow them, or to remove them altogether from diseased areas. The only course of action that the government is proposing is to fast track a new antibiotic to dose up fish in the hope they will survive long enough to get them to market. They’re looking to Chile as best practise country for solutions. It is a sick joke to propose a country that has a notorious global record for salmon industry collapse, widespread Piscirickettsia salmonis disease among salmon, plummeting numbers of wild fish populations and local fishing communities that have been devastated by the loss of wild fish catch. The future for Tasmania under the Liberals, backed by Labor, is writ large in what has happened to Chile’s wild coast.
The Greens and Tasmanian coastal communities won’t stand for it. We won’t accept this toothless report as an adequate response. We won’t accept our coastlines being trashed so that companies in Brazil and Canada can profit.
The House adjourned at 7.42 p.m.
