ADJOURNMENT

Senator WHISH-WILSON (Tasmania) (19:39): I gave an adjournment speech in here last night talking about shark nets, the so-called shark control program in Queensland and New South Wales, how cruel it is, why it's state sanctioned torture of our precious and federally protected marine life and how people are sick and tired of seeing video footage every day of humpback whales, mothers and their calves, dolphins and their baby dolphins, turtles and dugongs caught in these shark nets that don't work to protect our beaches.

But I was still shocked this morning when I got into my office and my staff showed me video footage of a mature humpback whale dead in shark nets off the coast of Wollongong. Strikingly, other footage showed a feeding frenzy of sharks that appeared to me to be bronze whalers at the most popular surfing beach in the country, Snapper Rocks in Queensland. That also happens to be the most netted shark beach in our country.

So here we have stark images of a dead humpback whale caught in the fisheries device that we call a shark net and a pack of sharks doing what sharks do, feeding in the ocean at a surf break, inside shark nets, the same beach where tragically only a few years ago a surfer was killed by a white shark inside the shark nets. So when are we going to change this? We as a country spent years fighting Japan over their illegal whaling in the Southern Ocean and, eventually, Japan retreated.

Yet here we are killing whales off our own coastline with stupid, archaic policies that Australians don't support. The Greens are going to continue to prosecute this. But, most importantly, the environment minister has before him right now the ability to stop this from happening.

This state sanctioned cruelty to marine life is only happening off our coasts because the state governments in New South Wales and Queensland have federal exemptions under EPBC law, the continuous use exemption in section 43B. That can be reviewed in environment laws and removed. But also, from estimates questions, we found out that DCCEEW, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, are talking to the Queensland government about the Queensland government's plan to expand their shark cull program, putting in more fishing nets that are going to kill more protected sharks and more protected marine life or even attract more sharks to the area and give people a false sense of security.

The environment minister can say no to that and send a very strong message that this barbarity has got to stop. While I have a few minutes left, I want to make some comments about the new environment laws that we are expecting to come into the Australian parliament any day now. Three times since I've been a senator, coming up to 14 years, I've seen governments attempt to reform environment laws, and they have all failed.

I predict that this one will fail too. I can tell you why. It's because Australians, like the Greens, want a set of laws that will protect the environment, not protect the interests of big business.

I have one question for Australians. With all the stuff that is going to be thrown at them in the weeks and months to come in all the advertising campaigns, I have one question for them. It's a simple one.

Who do you trust to protect the environment? The Australian Greens, a party that formed over 50 years ago to protect the environment, part of a movement to get people into places like the Australian federal parliament and campaign for the environment and climate action? Do you trust the Australian Greens, or do you trust the Labor government?

That is going to be the simple decision you'll have to make. The very first thing the government did when they got elected on the back of a very significant mandate was approve the biggest fossil fuel project in our nation's history—the North West Shelf extension out to 2070. The last thing they did in the last parliament was weaken environment laws for the salmon industry so a species can go extinct in Macquarie Harbour, the Maugean skate.

It's a species I've been talking about in here for nearly 14 years. Who do you trust? It is actually a very simple question, and I suspect that for the majority of Australians the answer to that is going to be very simple too.

They trust the Australian Greens to protect the environment. That's what we got into parliament for nearly 50 years ago. That's why thousands of people like me have worked really hard to do whatever we can to protect the environment.

They will back us— (Time expired)