Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Reconsiderations) Bill 2025
Mr WILKIE (Clark) (17:23): Let's be perfectly clear about this fact; if the parliament legislates today and tomorrow to give exemptions from the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to projects and industries, it will be one of the most egregious acts of environmental vandalism this parliament has ever been responsible for. In fact, I would say it would be second only to the Abbott government removing the price on carbon in late 2013.
The enormity of what this parliament is doing here cannot be underestimated. This country already has weak environmental laws, and, if the parliament passes this bill, they will be even weaker, because it means that, starting with the salmon industry and Macquarie Harbour on the West Coast of Tasmania but extending to perhaps hundreds of projects that were given the go-ahead more than five years ago and which have been in operation ever since on a continual basis, none of them can ever be reviewed by any future environment minister or any future government.
For the Prime Minister to come in here in question time today, to ridicule the crossbench and to claim that you must vote for the Labor Party if you care about the environment is just absolutely ridiculous! Is the member for Grayndler the Prime Minister or the 'Propaganda Minister'? It was just patent nonsense, and it disappoints me because the member for Grayndler is better than that.
I know he's much better than that, and he diminishes himself when he comes in here and says such absolute nonsense. The severity of what this parliament is in the process of doing cannot be underestimated. It will be a complete failure of governance.
What happened, for heaven's sake, to the promise by the Labor party in the lead up to the last election that, if elected, it would strengthen our environmental framework? It turned out to be just a con job. What about public opinion?
What about the fact that the vast majority of Tasmanians, when polled, want the salmon industry kicked out of Macquarie Harbour because of the environmental damage it's doing and the fact that it has helped take the maugean skate to the edge of extinction. Since when are less than 100 jobs in Strahan as important as they are? Since when are those jobs more valuable than dealing with the extinction crisis?
Of course, we must do everything in our power to deal with the extinction crisis. For this parliament to be in the process of legislating killing off one of the planet's most prehistoric species—to knowingly do it with legislation like this—can't be described as anything less than egregious environmental vandalism. What about the groundswell of dissent within the ALP?
You can't tell me there are not a lot of good hearted, intelligent ALP backbenchers who are in barely silenced revolt at the moment. What about them? It's a matter for the Labor Party, but it does call into question the integrity of the Labor Party when it's putting Tassal, Huon and Petuna ahead of the grassroots membership of that party.
What about the environment minister? I've got a lot of respect for the current environment minister, and none of my comments are directed at the member for Sydney. In fact, I feel a certain sympathy for the member for Sydney because she's been so ruthlessly sidelined and was made to come in here and read out that speech that she read out earlier today.
You could just look at the expression on her face. It was like she was talking while simultaneously sucking on the most bitter lemon this country has ever produced. That is no way to treat a frontbencher.
What about the industry itself? It's a curious thing that the people who are trying to do, in their minds, the right thing by the salmon industry by effectively carving it out from the EPBC Act—what they're actually doing is hastening the demise of the industry, and I'll tell you why. The salmon industry in Tasmania is an important economic driver.
It is a significant employer, and I actually support it. I actually want it to survive and achieve its full potential. But it will only achieve that potential if it is transparent, if it's very carefully regulated and if it's put on a genuinely sustainable footing.
Leaving it in Macquarie Harbour to kill off maugean skate is not putting it on a sustainable footing. What it's doing is just trashing the industry's reputation even further and hastening its demise. If anyone comes in here later today to vote for this bill and claims they're a friend of the salmon industry, they're the complete opposite, because, one day, the salmon industry will be on its knees, and the people who support this bill will be the ones to blame.
Let me talk about the maugean skate for a moment longer, and I proudly wear a little decoration of the maugean skate on my lapel. It is one of the most historic species on the planet. It is a remarkable creature.
It survived for millions of years—millions of years. So what does it make of all this talk about us dealing with the extinction crisis? When we come in here and we're going to vote on this, seemingly the government, maybe with the opposition—hopefully they will see sense and oppose it—are going to knowingly vote to make one of the oldest species on the planet extinct.
It's just breathtaking. It's absolutely breathtaking. It makes a complete mockery of everything that people say when they're wringing their hands and talking about the environment and how good they are on the environment, saying, 'If you care about the environment, you've got to vote for the Labor Party.' Ms Tink: It's bollocks.
Mr WILKIE: Yes, what bollocks! It's just garbage. Let's wrap a bit of context around this, because it's not just about Macquarie Harbour and it's not just about the maugean skate.
At the moment, Tasmania is confronting the largest mass farmed fish die-off in the state's history. I'm sure by now many honourable members would have seen photos or footage on the telly perhaps of, literally, tip-truck loads of dead fish being taken somewhere to be buried on someone's farm or at a toxic waste dump or something. What we're also seeing from video footage that has been obtained and what I'm also hearing from whistleblowers is exactly what's in these industry documents.
Let me tell you something about the character of the industry. This document is noted from 2014, but it was actually in use as recently as 2018. The relevant company claims there's a newer version of this document but refuses to release it to the ABC when pushed.
It's titled Mass mortality. That sounds very relevant, doesn't it? Mass mortality—as Tasmania goes through the largest mass mortality in the industry's history.
It says: In any large mortality event, as many fish as possible should be recovered for harvest and processing. Any fish—this is any dead fish that has died in a mass mortality event, which at the moment is called the Rickettsia bacteria—in which the gills can still bleed is potentially recoverable … Gross! By the way, this document, Emergency procedure in the event of significant risk to fish health, says: WHENEVER AFFECTED FISH ARE > 3KG, ROLLOVERS SHOULD BE BLED AND PLACED INTO ICE SLURRIES SO THAT THEY CAN BE PROCESSED IF APPROPRIATE In other words, at the moment, in Tasmania, fish that have died from Rickettsia bacteria in this appalling fish die-off, so long as their gills are still pink, with a bit of blood in the gills, and so long as the fish aren't already rotting on a beach somewhere, are being put in an ice slurry, taken away and processed for human consumption.
Even the fish that are apparently not infected by Rickettsia and are being harvested and processed are not being tested for Rickettsia. Given that it can take up to two weeks for the symptoms of Rickettsia to present themselves and given that we know as a fact that all of the farms and all of the farm sites and all of the pens now are infected with Rickettsia, you can draw no other conclusion than the fish companies in Tasmania are selling and consumers are purchasing and eating infected fish.
How on earth does that help maintain the reputation of Tasmania or the reputation of this industry? It doesn't. I make the point again—I want to labour this point—that the people that are running a protection racket for the salmon industry in Tasmania are actually going to be part of its demise.
What we should be doing is coming in here and making sure we have the very best environmental safeguards possible at a federal level and pressuring the state and territory governments to make sure they have the very best environmental safeguards and that they have the very best environment protection agencies so that we can have absolute confidence we're not eating fish that died in a bacterial outbreak and looked good enough with their gills pink enough to be processed and sold at Coles or Woolies.
Ms Tink: Yuck. Mr WILKIE: Yuck, yes! It's gross.
It's really gross. That's not as gross, believe it or not, as the images I'm sure some honourable members have seen of the beaches on the east coast in Tasmania and on Bruny Island in recent weeks with rotting fish carcasses and globules of fish oil—up on the beaches, which the Tasmania government said are completely safe. 'The water is clean, and the beaches are fine, but do not touch the fish.' Do these people know how silly they look?
It would be funny except it's so serious. It's so serious when it comes to ensuring the industry is sustainable, it's so serious when it comes to ensuring the environment is protected and safe, and it's so serious when it comes to the very pointed matter here tonight of the extinction crisis. This is the context in which we're saying, 'The fish farms can stay in Macquarie Harbour,' and the government and—I don't know—I think the opposition are saying that they don't give two hoots about one of the planet's oldest species becoming extinct.
Why is all this happening? Why are the government and the opposition acting so patently at odds with the best interests of the natural environment, and of a threatened species in particular, and so at odds with the public interest, so at odds with the groundswell of discontent on the backbench and so at odds with having the best reputation for the industry in the future?
It is for one reason: to harvest a few hundred votes in the electorate of Braddon. It is that crude, that blunt and that ugly. The government is happy—well, it is prepared, I should say—to drive the maugean skate to extinction because it might improve its chances of winning the Tasmanian north-west and west coast seat of Braddon.
When you think about it in that context, it's all the more ugly. I suppose the government might hope there's some benefit in the seat of Franklin and in the seat of Lyons, both of which also have fish farms. But, oh, the irony of it!
The member for Franklin is the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, and the Tassal factory has a lot of Huon aquaculture farms down the channel and down the Huon River. Oh, the irony of it! That minister is going to be in here voting in favour of this, even though it is actually hastening the demise of the industry by the trashing of the industry's reputation.
I struggled to get my head around this. For one seat—which, by the way, Labor has almost no chance of winning, so the whole exercise becomes even more ludicrous—they're taking a species closer to the edge of extinction. They are annoying the majority of Tasmanians who want fish farms kicked out of Macquarie Harbour, all to chase some votes that ultimately won't see them win the seat anyway.
It's just bizarre behaviour. It's just crazy behaviour. It's inexplicable, but that's what raw politics is like.
To echo my colleagues behind me, it helps to explain why the primary vote of the major parties is collapsing and why at this federal election, again, a third or more of the country will vote for someone else. They will vote for people who will fight for the environment, fight for the public interest, fight for their communities and fight for rational policies to grow industries, not to kill them.
I hold out some hope that the opposition will oppose this bill, probably for their own self-serving interests by trying to trip up the Labor Party before the election. But I don't care what their motivation is. I just hope they oppose it and vote against it.