Ms ROSOL (Bass) – Deputy Speaker, we have waited a long time for this State of the Environment report, too long, a decade longer than we should have. Throughout that time, we know that the Tasmanian environment has been deteriorating. We know that Tasmanians have been watching the deterioration, expressing their concern and noticing the changes in our environment around the state, noticing our coastlines deteriorating, forests disappearing, waterways deteriorate and the marine life in our waterways decreasing.
This has been troubling to see, and here we have in the State of the Environment report confirmation of this deterioration. What we have seen with our eyes has been confirmed by data. Unfortunately, there is not enough data for all that we needed to know about our environment. I note that recommendation 3 points out the need for us to develop an environmental data strategy. We need to know what is happening in our environment to be able to address it. This report goes a long way to us understanding what is happening, but we need to continually be gathering data so that we can keep on top of things, make plans and work out what we need to do to stop the deterioration of our environment.
It has been interesting listening to the conversation in here this morning about the environment and how we value it and how we view it. Minister Abetz just now said it is interesting to think about humanity being in nature, but so much of our conversation this morning has focused on nature’s value to us and what it gives to us. It helps our tourism, it boosts our economy, it has all these so-called positive impacts on us where we take from nature. The problem is that we are taking too much from nature. Perhaps the beavers knocked down a few trees, but we humans have overtaken the earth and are knocking down too much. We are taking too much out of the earth and we must pause, look at the evidence and change what we are doing if we want our environment to last and our natural, wild places to be able to continue.
Beyond that, we need our environment to be healthy for our own health and safety. We are not humanity in nature constantly drawing from nature just for our own benefit. If we continue to do that, we are destroying ourselves as well as destroying the Earth. We are part of the web of life, not over it, above it, able to suck everything out of it. We are part of the web of life and until we can find that balance where we exist in harmony with nature, we are sunk as a species and as a society. We are destroying this place and we are destroying our future.
The young people know that. They are not just sitting here scared because we are scaring them, they are scared because we they are looking at the evidence before us and they can see it. They are not stuck like we are, with old ways of looking at things, they are coming with fresh eyes and they know that action must be taken if they are to have any sort of future in this place.
The Greens welcome the State of the Environment report. We are grateful for the work that has gone into it and we want to listen to the recommendations in it and call on the government to implement the recommendations and do what is necessary to care for the environment in Tasmania for its own sake, because it has value and worth and because we need it also.
