Ms BADGER (Lyons) – Honourable Speaker, I thank the member for Franklin, Mr George, for bringing this on, particularly off the back of a town hall meeting at Eaglehawk Neck on 16 November attended by Mr George and the member for Braddon, Mr Garland. It was a packed town hall meeting of locals who were concerned about the salmon farms and Long Bay. It was also attended by people who weren’t opposed to salmon farming in Long Bay. It was attended by people who were employed there. I congratulate the Tasmanian Alliance for Marine Protection (TAMP) and the Friends of the Bays, the Bob Brown Foundation, everyone that was a part of that meeting for so professionally hearing everybody’s side of the story, for holding respectful conversations and making sure that everybody in that room was heard fairly. That’s what the debate should be about.
The concerns raised at that meeting were not about ensuring perpetual ongoing salmon farming in Tasmanian waterways. That wasn’t a concern for the locals down there. It was neither here nor there because these are multinational, multi‑billion-dollar companies; people were concerned in these regional areas about employment. Salmon farming is one way people can get jobs, sure. But imagine if we gave the same benefits to other forms of industry in regional areas. What if we gave those same benefits to people in ecosystem restoration? I note that if you do the census, there’s not even a dropdown employment category for people to choose that as their form of employment.
The minister said this is the most regulated agricultural sector. What if we listened to people in the hemp industry and dropped some of that industry’s heavy regulation, so that people could go into that and we could have a bigger hemp industry. This would go on to help the construction sector and be a huge export for this state, creating a productive industry that causes far less damage.
Specifically on the topic of Lease 55 in Long Bay, myself, Mr George and Mr Garland wrote to the minister, Mr Pearce, to clear up some confusion, because it’s also not clear to the community how the licensing system is being put in place. We know that there’s the environmental licence, which has been done through the EPA, but there’s also the NRE licensing through the marine farming licence. How do the two intersect? And how is it that we are at this point with this industry in this state, at the scale it is, with the effects it is having on a public environment, that it’s still not clear to people how it’s actually working and how the industry is getting these regulations?
As Mr George pointed out, it is clear that Long Bay is the wrong location for salmon farming at any kind of scale. This is not like it was in the 1980s. Things have changed an awful lot since then. It has shallow waters. All of the evidence is exactly what was found when the other place had the finfish farming review. It’s all been made perfectly clear. The Minister for the Environment talks about the science. The science is all on the table, you can’t just cherrypick different parts of it. It’s overwhelmingly saying that salmon farming is damaging these environments, and Long Bay is really the cusp of that. To renew this licence with everything that is going on, with the damage that has occurred and the damage that will continue to occur, is completely reckless. It’s really going to put a test to the EPA and the decision-making process if it is to go ahead.
There’s also a question around what considerations are going to be put in place and what the EPA are considering, particularly in terms of the research done in the past on the algal blooms that have occurred and the visual, social, chemical and biological impacts, which is actually going to be part of extending beyond the 35 metres of this lease.
We talk about the use of antibiotics in the waterways, florfenicol, on the Tasman Peninsula and the east coast, areas that are huge for tourism. When we’ve got crayfish industries not being able to operate and warnings, people are concerned about swimming in our waterways. Tourists come to Tasmania for our natural environment. They’re not coming to Tasmania to see farmed Atlantic salmon. They’re coming to enjoy the natural beauty of this place and we cannot see a summer in this place, when our state is so heavily reliant on tourism, with concerns over swimming in our waterways because of the use of chemicals.
