QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS

Senator BLEYER (Tasmania) (15:31): This is not my first speech. I move: That the Senate take note of the answer given by Minister Ayres representing the Minister for the Environment and Water, Murray Watt, about the cruel treatment of fish in fish farms in Tasmania. It's not just the salmon that are suffering.

As a lawyer, which I previously was, I led the still ongoing legal action against the Minister for the Environment and Water to bring fish farming in Tasmania's Macquarie Harbour under control. Macquarie Harbour is the only place in the world that the endangered Maugean skate continues to live. The Maugean skate is an ancient species that has been gliding across the floor of Macquarie Harbour since the time of the dinosaurs, but now it is facing imminent extinction.

This is an extinction brought about by fish farming and by this government making decisions for big corporations instead of our threatened species and the environments that they depend on to live. The number of fish-farming cages in Macquarie Harbour is industrial-scale and out of control. It has caused the oxygen levels in the harbour's waters to plummet.

Just imagine being at home with no escape, the oxygen being removed from the air, and suffocating to death. This is what fish farming is doing to the endangered Maugean skate in Macquarie Harbour. In August 2025, this government saw fit to endorse the continuation of expanded fish farms in Macquarie Harbour, a volume of fish cages that is killing the Maugean skate.

Scientists tell us the Maugean skate is just one extreme weather event away from extinction. This extreme weather event, the strongest El Nino on record, is here. This is a government that promised no extinctions.

If it is to make good on its promise, it must immediately end the industrial-scale fish farming in Macquarie Harbour if the Maugean skate has any chance of avoiding its otherwise imminent extinction.