Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, I advise that a vote will be required.
I move –
That the House:
1) Notes:
a) Tasmania is facing serious environmental challenges including the pollution and degradation of waterways, the impacts of climate change-fueled and extreme weather events, and the decline of iconic native species.
b) environmental impacts create significant community concern and anxiety, pose substantial public and economic costs, and add uncertainty to industry and development.
2) Recognises the Tasmanian Government has a statutory obligation to prepare a State of the Environment Report every five years
3) Further notes the last State of the Environment Report was released in 2009.
4) Agrees the Liberals have entirely neglected a basic requirement of governance by failing to produce a State of the Environment Report in both 2014 and 2019.
5) Understands a 2024 State of the Environment Report has – despite further delays – now been finalised and handed to the Minister for Housing and Planning, Hon. Felix Ellis MP.
6) Recognises the Liberals’ propensity to delay the release of important reports and findings as long as possible.
7) Further recognises the release of this report could be held off until November if the Minister chose to do so.
8) Acknowledges the Parliament and the community would benefit greatly by the release of the State of the Environment Report prior to the Budget Reply and Budget Estimates process commencing.
9) Orders the Minister for Housing and Planning to table the 2024 State of the Environment Report by 5pm 12 September 2024.
Tasmania’s environment is undoubtedly its biggest asset. Whether you look at our branding campaigns such as ‘Come down for air’, or outside the tourism industry at our agricultural sector and even sectors the Greens do not support, the aquaculture and timber industries, they all trade on our pristine environment, clean water, clean air, and this being a really good place to be. Our environment is precious, it is our greatest asset, it is incredibly valuable.
The substance of our motion today is to order the government to table the State of the Environment report. The State of the Environment reports are incredibly important documents. The report is prepared by the Tasmanian Planning Commission and is intended to further the objectives of Tasmania’s resource management and planning system, in particular promoting the sustainable development of natural and physical resources and the maintenance of ecological processes and genetic diversity. The ongoing failure to deliver the State of the Environment Report means that crucial decisions about planning, the Budget and the management of the state’s natural resources are not properly being made by the government.
The last Tasmanian State of the Environment Report was tabled in parliament on 16 November 2009. That is nearly 15 years ago. There is a statutory requirement for this government to review and publish a State of the Environment Report every five years. The report is now 10 years overdue. There have been two statutory deadlines missed, one in 2009 and another in 2014. Each time they delay the Liberal government fails in their legislative duty to Tasmanians.
The State of the Environment Report 2009 covers the reporting period between 2003 and 2008. That means the comprehensive data about our environment showing the trends of condition, the changes and the pressures on Tasmania’s physical environment have not been provided for almost 20 years. This is at a time when we should be producing this report every five years. We are lagging behind. For a state that thinks it does environment well and for a state that trades so heavily on the environment, we are doing very poorly in transparency about that environment and what is and is not going well. We need that long‑term data, we need those long-term trends so we can measure the declines, or hopefully the inclines, in the data being captured.
It is clear that recommendations made 15 years ago by the Tasmanian Planning Commission about how to improve the condition of our environment and how better to collect data and monitor our environment have not been implemented. It is clear that we cannot and should not be acting on data that is 15 years old. That was made very clear in an open letter from a whole raft of environment groups to the Tasmanian government when the State of the Environment Report was received by this government. We need to be 100 per cent clear that sitting behind this motion is the fact that the State of the Environment Report has already been received by government. It will be tabled in this House but the question is when.
The environment groups wrote:
The government’s failure to publish the report in 2014 and 2019 has come at a cost. These reports stimulate local employment, scientific advancement, cooperation between sectors, growth in sustainable industries and inform public debate. Tasmania is now 10 years behind where it could have been. These reports would have helped Tasmanians protect their way of life.
That was on 30 August, just a few couple of weeks ago, when the minister received the report from the Tasmanian Planning Commission. That is a delay from even the Planning Commission’s original timeline in terms of receipt and delivery of the report.
I will touch on science denialism and cherry-picking of science by the Liberal government. This is not to say that we have no information at all about Tasmania’s environment. There are many incredibly talented and committed scientists working to study our environment, report on it, blow the whistle on it in many cases and articulate what is happening in the environmental context in this state. There is good work going on, but what we need is a holistic review and report of what they are finding.
The government’s continual misrepresentation of science has led to the demoralisation of our wonderful scientists and researchers who have been the ones on the front line desperately trying to convey to this government that Tasmania’s environment is at breaking point while the government and industry cherry-pick elements to construct a false narrative that supports an anti-science outcome. This is of deep concern to so many people. The recent handling, for example, of the Brook report into the decline of the Maugean skate demonstrates this government’s approach to science perfectly. The Brook report stated unequivocally that:
A major cause of the Maugean skate’s population decline appears to be habitat degradation driven by a combination of low dissolved oxygen levels and deep-water turnover events, nutrient outflows from salmon farming and altered river flows due to hydroelectric operations.
The Brook report acknowledges that a confluence of factors is contributing to the decline of the Maugean skate – climate change, marine heatwaves, increased predation, impacts from recreational fishing, declines in genetic diversity and the ongoing habitat destruction caused by the salmon farming industry in Macquarie Harbour, but you would not know that by the way the government took this report and reported on it. Only one issue, the issue of the models used to inform population predictions of the skate, prompted a response from the government.
We have this outpouring of faux anger from government – and frankly, Labor – in relation to the actions of the federal environment minister. The federal environment minister has legislative responsibilities, let alone her political responsibilities, not to oversee a single future extinction. She has legislative requirements under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 to protect species and make sure that critically endangered species such as the Maugean skate do not go extinct, do not go further down the tube, yet we have this government pressuring the minister to make a non-scientific, purely political decision based on its advocacy.
In the 2009 State of the Environment Report – the last one we saw here in this place – it documented the trends and conditions and pressures on 30 environmental indicators in the period 2003 to 2008, including climate variability and change, threatened species and communities, pest species, water extraction, soil diversity and more. Not a single one of the 30 indicators improved their condition during the reporting period. Not a single indicator showed a reduction in environmental pressure during the reporting period. At best, a handful of indicators remained the same, while others had insufficient data from which to form a trend. In a climate and biodiversity crisis, having long-term reliable data that shows the response of our environment to human activities is absolutely crucial. The government has failed to release this data for over 10 years.
The reason we are bringing this motion forward today is not only because this government has this report – it actually has it in its hot little hands at the moment and is simply refusing to release it – but it is critically important we have this kind of data ahead of the Budget. We need to scrutinise this Budget. We need to scrutinise the investment that this government is making into the Environment department, the Threatened Species Unit, habitat restoration programs and a whole raft of different environmental initiatives that ultimately sustain and enhance our brand. We need to be scrutinising this government over what it is investing in and what it is not investing in. To think that the government has this report, years of work has been done, it has cost us presumably hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce this report, and yet we, the parliament, and the broader Tasmanian community do not have the transparency of that report being publicly available to put down on the table alongside the budget and this government’s budget priorities. That is why we are bringing this motion forward today.
There is a statutory obligation – and I am sure the minister will talk about this – for the minister to table this report in this House within 15 sitting days. He received it on 30 August. I have not done the math but I think that means it might be in October some time before he is forced to table this document. We will see this document. It is not about whether we will or will not see this document 10 years later. The question is, will we see it in time for the Budget? Will we see it in time to scrutinise the investments of this government or non-investment of this government in the environment, and can there be transparency about why those investments are being made, how they were prioritized and how they were informed? At the end of the day, people can make a decision about whether those investments are well-targeted, whether there should have been more, or whether they should have been focused on something else.
The Tasmanian Planning Commission is the body that writes the State of the Environment Report and the Planning Commission is a credible statutory body, but there have been questions raised in the past about whether it is the appropriate place to conduct this kind of review.
The Independent Review of the Tasmanian Planning Commission in 2020 raised questions as to whether or not the Tasmanian Planning Commission is the most appropriate organisation to prepare the State of the Environment Report. While many stakeholders agree that it was preferable for an independent organisation, separate from government, to prepare the report, due to, and I quote:
Limited confidence in government agencies to accurately report information that may reveal negative environmental impact.
Some suggested that the Tasmanian Planning Commission, and I quote again:
… lacks the relevant skills, expertise and capability to access and analyse the relevant data.
Clearly, the Tasmanian Planning Commission needs to get in and has got in expert relevant expert advice external to its own ranks but there have been questions raised.
The Tasmanian Planning Commission has also not been sufficiently supported. The Independent Review of the Tasmanian Planning Commission found that since the last report was prepared in 2009, internal resources have been put towards implementing planning reforms and other functions while:
State of the Environment reporting is an important but demanding task that has become too onerous and tended to fall away.
Government funding to the Tasmanian Planning Commission to fulfil their obligations to complete the State of the Environment Report have not kept pace with the ever-evolving reporting standards.
Right to Information documents uncovered by The Australia Institute and the Environmental Defenders Office revealed that the reasons the Tasmanian Planning Commission could not produce a state of report since 2009 is because of insufficient funding.
We are missing statutory, legislated timelines for the production of a State of the Environment Report simply because the government has not prioritised the necessary funding to the agency charged with actually delivering that report in the first place.
In 2019, the Department of Justice estimated the cost of producing the State of the Environment Report would be $1.25 million, however, the Planning Commission were given only $500,000 in the 2023-24 State Budget to reproduce the report.
Concerns have also been raised by environment groups, including Environment Tasmania, about the government potentially providing direction to the Tasmanian Planning Commission on preparing the report.
That is why getting this document on the table is so critical. The Greens have been putting pressure on and talking about this for many years. We have been calling on the State of the Environment Report together with other environment groups from across Tasmania to actually get this document published. We had to push and push for the government to commission it. Now it has been completed and now it has been received. We are trying to push and push to get it released before government.
It should not take pressure from the Greens. It should not take pressure from non‑government organisations to force the government to produce a report that they are statutorily required to produce every five years. It is the responsibility of government to ensure that the Tasmanian Planning Commission is sufficiently funded to fulfil its functions so that Tasmanians have confidence that the information about the environment is being reported on accurately and in a timely manner. We did note that there was not only the decades-long delay from the Planning Commission, but there was a request for a several-month-long delay several months ago to finally see it deliver its report in August of this year.
Our motion is pretty simple. It notes that Tasmania is facing serious environmental challenges. We have just lived through one of the worst and most sustained storm events that the state has seen in many years.
We have just had a debate about the level of damage that was done, the challenges of restoring power networks to some 47,000 Tasmanian homes, the challenges that TasNetworks has had and the communication issues. These are all costs to the Tasmanian people. Whether it is climate, whether it is from extreme weather events, whether it is the decline of iconic native species, we have some significant environmental challenges. They are of concern to our community.
Tasmanians love their environment. They really do love their environment. When they see and know that it is declining steadily, that not only adds a taint to our brand, but it adds angst to every single Tasmanian who cares. It is impossible to deny clause (1) of this motion, which notes that we have some serious challenges.
We recognise that the government has a statutory obligation to prepare the State of the Environment Report every five years. That is simply a statement of fact. We further note that the State of the Environment Report was last released in 2009. Again, simply a statement of fact.
We would like the House to agree that the Liberals have entirely neglected a basic requirement of governance by failing to report the State of the Environment Report both in 2014 and 2019. This is undeniable. If you have a statutory obligation to produce a report and you do not do it, it is a failure of your obligation. The Liberals have absolutely, entirely, neglected a basic requirement of governance.
We understand that the 2024 State of the Environment Report has now been finalised and handed to the minister. That has been confirmed publicly and is a statement of fact. We recognise the propensity for the Liberals to delay the release of these reports as long as possible, and particularly after the Budget. We further recognise that the release of the report could be held off until November, if the minister chooses to do so. That speaks to the 15 sitting days that he is able to sit on this report before actually tabling it in this House. We acknowledge that the community would benefit from the release of this report pre‑Budget. I have been over that.
As a result, this motion is calling on the House to order the minister to table this report by 5.00 p.m. tomorrow. That allows us to take the Budget away in one hand, take the State of the Environment Report away in the other, and we and the community can spend time analysing each of those documents and making our own call and our own analysis on what investments have been made, what investments have not been made and, as a result, how committed this government is to actually protecting the environment.
We know that Tasmanians care. Tasmanians have consistently stood up for the protection of their environment. They have stood up to defend the environment from destructive industrial developments. They have stood up to protect their environment from death by a thousand cuts. They stand up to restore their environment. There are thousands of people who are working on weeding programs, river restoration and broader landscape restoration projects as volunteers. People want to see a healthy environment because they are sustained by the environment. The environment is, unfortunately, not being sustained by us. That is the problem here.
Deputy Speaker, the motion, I commend it to the House. It is a pretty straightforward motion. This report sits with government already. It will cost them nothing and take zero effort to table it by 5.00 p.m. tomorrow afternoon. It is something that Tasmanians have been waiting not-so-patiently for, waiting in a very frustrated fashion, for a decade now. It is a document that will tell us a lot about the state of our environment, what our key challenges are, what the key opportunities are, and where the needs for investment and focus are going to be into the future. Importantly, it will show the trends over a long time.
There has been a lack of data over this 10‑year hiatus, let us call it, and failure of the government to produce a State of the Environment Report – but better late than never. The government has it. There should be absolutely no reason why it cannot make a commitment, it cannot support this motion, and it cannot, ultimately, deliver the State of the Environment Report to this House tomorrow so it can be released publicly, so that it can be scrutinised, so the Tasmanian public can analyse its content, make their own judgements on this government’s performance.
It is 10 years or thereabouts since this government was elected. It is 10 years since there was a State of the Environment Report. It is time we had it on the table so that we can make a judgement about its performance and its priorities when it comes to the coming Budget. So, I commend the motion.
