Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, I will just make a brief reply. I thank the honourable members for Nelson and Mersey and the Leader of Government Business, but particularly Nelson and Mersey, for their very thoughtful responses to the motion to note the State of the Environment report, but also calling on the government to fund and implement its 16 recommendations.
I am disappointed to hear that government does not support the motion and I can indicate, so members can prepare themselves, that I intend to call the division on this notice of motion. No more Mrs Nice Guy.
Ms Forrest – They might not vote out loud. You might not lose.
Mrs Hiscutt – You wait till the President makes a call.
Ms O’CONNOR – Anyway, I have put a motion up for council to consider and I feel it requires a vote. I have found it interesting in the Leader of Government Business’s response, how sometimes – and the same thing happens when we talk about the climate – the government is so proud to say that around half of our state is protected in reserves, and then at other times it is almost like talking about our protected areas is anathema to them. The same with the climate and forests, ‘maintain native forest industrial logging,’ then, in another breath, when you are talking about the climate, talk about how proud you are of our net‑zero profile, which, of course started in 2013 when we set aside those forests for the Tasmanian Forest Agreement. Here in a couple of examples is why we are in this strife we are in because we have a report here that says these things need to be done and a government that says we are doing all sorts of things, but not the big picture, strategic, seriously funded and, in some cases, quite difficult things to do.
I am disappointed that the government has decided not to support this motion, and I can indicate that we will be back and we will talk about the State of the Environment report again. We will talk about its recommendations and findings again and I hope over time our government sees that there is a strong will in the community for real action on the environment.
I have my own thoughts on what happened in the Queensland election. The Greens vote held on a statewide percentage point of view, but we lost a seat. It is interesting to have a look at our campaign because, it could be argued, for example, we did not talk about the environment enough in Queensland. That could be argued.
I look forward to seeing whatever the government’s response is to the State of the Environment report because then that will give us something to work from and we will have a better understanding of government’s commitment or not to protecting the environment. It is one thing to put $8 million into threatened species protection, but you are still logging the native forest that the swift parrot needs. You still have tens of thousands of fish in a closed harbour in Macquarie Harbour, which is the only remaining habitat of the Maugean skate.
We have this cognitive dissonance at scale here. It is deeply frustrating because I know if we had a one-on-one conversation with every single member in this place, they would agree that we need to tackle the challenges that have been put forward to us in the State of the Environment report and the obvious challenges that we know about and we can see all around us. All you have to do is pay attention to what is happening around us and you can see it and you can feel it. Talk to young people, as the member for Nelson and the member for Mersey were talking about, young people are stressed up to their back teeth and it is by responding in a collective, cohesive, and strategic, focused way to something like the State of the Environment Report 2024 that we give them hope and that is part of our job.
Motion agreed to.
