Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, there is really only one word I have for this: pathetic. You accept that this clause is based in fact. I think if you reviewed the Hansard, it was the minister that introduced native forest logging and started sledging the Greens on our position in relation to native forest logging. That prompted a debate about the impacts and me reading into Hansard the evidence from the recovery plan for the swift parrot. This is a statement of fact, as you acknowledge. Whether or not the Hansard debate, what that reflects, this motion should stand alone. There is no doubt Tasmania is facing serious environmental challenges. The entire world is facing serious environmental challenges. We have just lived through a severe weather event that has delivered degradation to the environment. Whether it is lost trees, eroded rivers, escaped pollution from disposal sites, and so forth, it has delivered an environmental impact that is a challenge. This clause should stand as written because it establishes the basis upon which the rest of the motion is written, and it establishes why the release of the State of the Environment report is so urgent.
We are facing these environmental challenges. We have not had a statutory report on this for a decade. We need to see it, and the motivation from our perspective of getting the report tomorrow – next week it seems, is so that we can properly scrutinise it against the Budget. We are going to have limited time to do that now. That is assuming the government supports the motion in the first place. We do not support this amendment. We think this is an exercise in denialism of a fact that adds important context to the motion. The motion itself needs to stand on its own two feet, and it needs to have that context written into it.
