Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin - Leader of the Greens) - Mr Speaker, I want to follow up on the comments that were made earlier in the House about aquaculture activities in Macquarie Harbour. It is important to put on the record the alternative view, which is that there are many people in Tasmania who would welcome a decision by Tanya Plibersek to require salmon farms to pull salmon out of the Macquarie Harbour. This is because all the evidence has been directed through the science fairly and squarely onto the salmon farming pollution as the primary driver of the anticipated extinction of the Maugean skate in just a number of years unless that pollution ends.
This was all forecast by the salmon industry in 2011 when it admitted that the big expansion it was planning to do would cause what it called, 'minimal to moderate harm to the species'. That was at a time, 12 years ago, when the tonnage of salmon farming, the biomass, was incredibly small compared to what it is today. Since then, we have had a succession of disasters in Macquarie Harbour, all caused by inappropriate salmon farming in the wrong environment.
It has been wrong for the salmon. There were 1.35 million salmon killed in one heat event about three or four years ago. There have been other dramatic mass mortalities in Macquarie Harbour for salmon.
It has been wrong, especially, for the biodiversity of Macquarie Harbour, with the impacts not just on the Maugean skate. Tassal salmon pens had dead zones recorded there. The damage to World Heritage Area values, which the Environmental Protection Authority identified and also the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) identified three or four years ago, have come from salmon farming: from faeces from salmon, and from the uneaten food piled on the harbour floor below salmon pens - about 2000 tonnes of it a year. That has lowered the dissolved oxygen in the area.
As often happens in Tasmania, we have an industry that is now too big to fail. That is the problem. We could have controlled the industry and we could have had a virtuous relationship between salmon farming and marine environments because that is what there once was in Macquarie Harbour. Back before the three big companies, Tassal, Huon and Petuna, began operating in Macquarie Harbour, there was less than about 2000 tonnage a year of salmon farmed in Macquarie Harbour without problems. There were no identified environmental impacts. Then it went up to over 21 000 tonnes, or 25 000 tonnes in a bad year. I am not sure where it is today. I have not followed it.
Ms Finlay - You are making comments about withdrawing salmon from the harbour and you do not know how much biomass is there. No facts.
Mr SPEAKER - Order.
Dr WOODRUFF - What I know is the science I read, Ms Finlay. I follow the science.
Ms Finlay - No, you said you do not know and you have been making these extreme comments.
Mr SPEAKER - Order, member for Bass. You will have to leave the Chamber if you continually interject.
Dr WOODRUFF - I do not need to know the tonnage. I just need to know what the scientists have said.
The other thing is that the salmon industry loves to enormously distort the number of jobs created in salmon farming. The Australian Bureau of Statistics census numbers are very clear about this. There are, at best, 1722 people employed in the salmon industry in Tasmania. On Tasmania's west coast, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, including Strahan, Zeehan, Rosebery, Tullah and Trial Harbour, aquaculture accounts for 4.2 per cent of the total employment, not the 17 per cent the industry claims.
According to Tourism Tasmania, 19 400 people are employed in tourism - 10 times as many as the salmon industry. The salmon industry continues to exaggerate its economic significance to the Tasmanian community and the western Tasmanian community. All jobs are important in a place like Tasmania but we have to be accurate about the figures and we cannot exaggerate what is happening.
Ms Finlay - Fulltime, full salary jobs; really well-paid jobs; highly skilled jobs -
Mr SPEAKER - Order, member for Bass.
Dr WOODRUFF - Yes, there are fish farm jobs in western Tasmania, as there are in the south and other areas but there is massive tourism employment there as well. That is very much so for Strahan and so many of those tourism jobs rely on the health of Macquarie Harbour. They rely on the beautiful waters and the fact that there are things like Maugean skates swimming around on the bottom there - a beautiful species that does not need to go extinct.
This industry has been on notice for decades now and this is what has been happening.
Ms Finlay - They have not been on notice for decades.
Dr WOODRUFF - They have been on notice for decades. Instead of having had timely corrective actions, now at the last minute they are saying it is - I am just going to find from the situation overseas. In Canada, British Columbia has transitioned out of the water in some regions, and Mowi [OK], a Norwegian company, is suing the government. Mowi has structured its business on the predictable replacement of federal authorisations. That whole country is transitioning out of open-net salmon farms in waters.
This is an opportunity for Tasmania. Instead of companies crying poor, they need to look at being sustainable in their environment. That means not destroying species. We cannot allow species to go extinct just to have salmon profits.
