Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Reconsiderations) Bill 2025
Senator McKIM (Tasmania—Australian Greens Whip) (20:59): At the commencement of my contribution on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Reconsiderations) Bill 2025, I foreshadow the moving of the second reading amendment that has been circulated in Senator Hanson-Young's name. This is a sad, sad day for environment protection in Australia.
I want to be very clear about how we find ourselves here today. We find ourselves here today because the old political parties in this country, the Labor and Liberal parties, have colluded to do a number of things. They've colluded to, firstly, get industrial salmon farming into Macquarie Harbour, on Tasmania's West Coast, where it never should have been permitted to move in in the first place.
Remember, a third of Macquarie Harbour is World Heritage area. It is the last remaining home of the maugean skate anywhere on the planet—an iconic ancient fish species that is one adverse event away from extinction. The Labor and Liberal parties have also colluded to allow the toxic industrial salmon farming industry in Tasmania to be effectively unregulated, even though there are some very high-level so-called regulations in place.
This is an industry that, like so many others in Tasmanian, historically and currently, has got the ear of both the Labor and Liberal parties. As a result, it is not subject to the stringent regulations that it should be subject to. We've seen this in Tasmania, where industries or organisations get hold of major party governments.
We saw it with hydro back in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, when they built dam after dam. They basically ran the state for decades. Then they suffered a big defeat at the hands of an emerging conservation movement, an emerging Greens party, in Tasmania when the Franklin dam was stopped.
Then along came the forest industry, which, again, completely captured the Labor and Liberal parties in Tasmania—by the way, where I found my environmental awakening, when I was arrested at a place called Farmhouse Creek in the mid-1980s. For decades, the forest industry ran Tasmania. Then we had companies like Gunns, who were a forestry company but proposed a pulp mill for the Tamar Valley.
Sorry, I've fast-forwarded past the Wesley Vale pulp mill debacle, which I'll go back to and which I'm very grateful for in one way because it gave us Christine Milne, who was the first woman to lead a political party in Tasmania's history and later, of course, went on to lead the Australian Greens as a senator in this place. We had the Tamar Valley pulp mill, and then the tourism industry came along and got hold of the government down there in Tasmania.
The Labor and Liberal parties just gave the tourism industry everything they wanted: 'You want to develop inside national parks? Yes, you go for it. We'll even establish an expressions-of-interest process to allow you to do that.' Today, it is the industrial salmon farming corporations who have got their hooks into both the Labor and Liberal parties—the Liberal and Labor parties in Tasmania and both the Liberal and Labor parties up here in Canberra.
Of course, it's a Liberal government down in Tasmania and a Labor government up here. How else did we get to this place? I want to rewind a little bit and talk about the commitment Labor made before the last election.
Labor promised the Australian people before the last election that Labor would fix the broken environment laws that were not doing their job of protecting the environment. That was a solemn commitment that the Labor Party gave to the Australian people. The Labor Party was very close to an agreement with the Greens only months ago to deliver on that commitment and pass legislation through this place that would actually have improved environmental protections in Australia.
It didn't go as far as we would have liked it to go, not even close, but it would have indisputably represented an improvement in environmental protections in Australia. What happened then? The fossil fuel CEOs got on the phone to Mr Albanese and got on the phone to the Western Australian Premier, Mr Cook, and those two people were instructed to pull the agreement and pull the legislation.
Labor then struck their own bill off the Notice Paper in this place. So there went any hope of improving environmental protection laws in Australia because the fossil fuel corporations gave their marching orders to the Australian Labor Party. When the fossil fuel corporations say, 'Jump,' the Australian Labor Party ask, 'How high would you like us to jump?' Now we come to today.
When it's not the fossil fuel companies who are pulling the strings of a puppet Labor government, it is the industrial salmon farming corporations who are pulling the strings of this compliant Labor government. By the way, the industrial salmon farming corporations operating in Tasmania have paid no corporate tax at all in the last five years. They are in the middle of a mass mortality event where at least a million—honestly, probably two or three million by now—fish have died.
They've been sprung suffocating live fish by throwing them into pens with dead fish and then closing those pens down so that the live fish suffocate. It's egregious animal cruelty to the extent that the RSPCA has now permanently withdrawn its accreditation from the company involved. It is a mass mortality event that has led to countless beaches in south-east Tasmania being contaminated with dead salmon carcasses.
A congealed, fatty, stinking mess is washing up on the beaches in south-eastern Tasmania. There are plenty of beaches in south-eastern Tasmania where you can't go swimming without bumping into stinking, rotten salmon carcasses. You can't go walking on the beaches without your feet being coated in stinking, fatty slime composed of the remnants of dead salmon.
You can't take your dogs down to those beaches, because the dogs eat the diseased, antibiotic riddled remnants of the dead salmon. On top of all that, you've got these industrial salmon farming corporations—they are multinational corporations offshoring their profits, I might add, while they're paying no corporate tax here in Australia—driving an ancient, iconic fish species, the maugean skate, into extinction.
That's how we've ended up here today—regulatory capture; state capture; political parties bought off by dirty political donations; the Labor and Liberal parties refusing to stand up to corporate vested interests, as usual in Tasmania and up here in Canberra; and toxic salmon farming companies that only care about their profits, which they offshore. But do you know what they're not offshoring?
They're not offshoring their animal cruelty, they're not offshoring the extinction of the maugean skate, they're not offshoring the polluting mess that they are leaving behind on our beaches, they're not offshoring the slime and the sludge that coats the dead zones underneath salmon farming cages and they're not offshoring the massive harm they are doing to Tasmania's vibrant marine ecological systems.
They're not offshoring any of that; they're just offshoring the profits. They're leaving all the misery, the animal agony, the species' extinction and the environmental harm behind. That's got to be dealt with by the Tasmanian people, it's got to be dealt with by our marine environment and it's got to be dealt with by an iconic fish species that had been doing quite nicely—thank you very much—for countless millennia in Macquarie Harbour until the toxic industrial salmon farms moved in where they never should have gone in the first place.
I want to remind people of this: times are changing. There's a mood down in Tasmania—and I believe it's not limited to Tasmania—where people have had a gutful of what is going on. People have had a gutful of the marine pollution caused by toxic industrial salmon farms.
They've had a gutful of the species extinction caused by toxic industrial salmon corporations. They've had a gutful of walking along their local beaches and having their feet coated in the remnants of dead salmon. They've had a gutful of going for a dip, a swim, and bumping into diseased, rotten salmon carcasses.
The people have had a gutful and they are rising up against this; they are rising up in their droves right now. They are not only coming to rallies. They are not only coming into this parliament, as we've seen this week.
They are also going to vote in massive numbers at the ballot box in this federal election. They're going to vote for the environment and for the maugean skate. They're going to vote for candidates and political parties like the Greens and independent candidates who are standing up against salmon farming corporations.
They are going to vote for those parties, and they are going to put the Labor and Liberal parties last because of what they have done. I want to say that I'm proud to be part of a political party that has been part of that movement. I want to acknowledge the work of one person in particular in the Greens, and that is my friend Senator Pete Whish-Wilson, who is in the chamber here.
On our behalf, and on behalf of countless Tasmanians, he has led the charge on this issue for well over a decade. He is a warrior for our oceans who has led the charge and worked tirelessly alongside local communities and the environment movement in Tasmania to bring to light the corruption, the species extinction that is looming and the way in which this corrupt toxic industry has got its hooks into the major political parties.
When I saw Senator Whish-Wilson sharing his opinions with the Prime Minister this morning, I wanted to say I am very, very proud to be a member of the same political party, and I'm very glad that the Prime Minister can be so certain about the views that are so passionately held by the Australian Greens in this place. Australia's environment laws, by the end of tonight, are going to be weaker and less protective of the environment than when Labor came to power three years ago.
Labor came to power promising to improve environmental protections in Australia. They're going to go to an election, after a full term in government, having delivered a massive weakening of environment protections in this country. It is a shameful abrogation of their responsibility to nature, it is a shameful breach of an election promise they made to the Australian people before the last election and it is an embarrassing shattering of the mandate that they were given by the Australian people to improve environment laws.
The vote share of the major parties in this country is collapsing at speed. Thirty-five years ago nearly 95 per cent of Australian voters voted for either the Labor Party or the coalition. At the last election that was down to nearly 65 per cent and it's going to crash again at this election, largely because neither the Labor Party nor the coalition are prepared to step up to defend and protect nature.
They're in lockstep on destroying our forests. They are in lockstep in backing the big toxic salmon farming corporations who are destroying our marine environment, destroying coastal amenity and driving the maugean skate into extinction. Well, the Greens have had a gutful, and ever-increasing numbers of Australians have had a gutful.
I'll make a prediction here: the environment vote at this election will be the biggest we have ever seen in Australia's history. People in their droves are going to vote for nature, they're going to vote for the marine environment, they're going to vote for our forests and they're going to vote out the old parties who refuse to stand up and defend nature.