Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It is. This is the company in Tassie. Here's another: Huon. Huon was taken over by Brazilian company JBS in 2021. Again, it's not a pure operation. This company was the subject of a huge corruption scandal in Brazil which helped finance its first acquisitions in Australia. There's not a clean history here. JBS is not very well regarded globally. JBS was also fined US$8 million for deforestation in the Amazon back in 2017.

Lastly, Petuna, a company that was taken over by New Zealand-based Sealord in 2020, has also attracted significant criticism and controversy in their home country for trawling environmentally sensitive seamounts. Here's the kicker—the Tasmanian salmon industry has paid no income tax, zero, since at least 2019, despite selling over $4 billion worth of product. That's who Labor and the LNP are spending the final week of this term of the Australian parliament bending over backwards for. Fishy is a good word for it. This whole sorry saga is a great illustration of exactly why people actually hate politics. Let me explain. It's broken promises, dirty deals and media spin to cover it all up. In 2022 Labor promised that, if people elected them, they'd overhaul and strengthen environmental laws. It is the last week of parliament before the election, and Labor just broke that promise.

First, they scrapped their promised environmental protection agency after a phone call from the Premier of Western Australia—anything to protect corporate mining profits, right? But it doesn't end there. They're now teaming up with the coalition for a new deal to weaken our environmental laws. They promised to strengthen them, and now they're working with the coalition to weaken them. Labor and the coalition team up to protect a destructive industry that is threatening species extinction. Did they ever plan to keep their promises in the first place? Now they seriously expect people to trust them after all this. It's absolutely shameful. Frighteningly, this isn't just a carveout for the salmon industry. It weakens our environmental laws across all of the industries. The mining industry, coal and gas companies, and logging companies will all benefit from these changes—free reign to trash our environment with absolutely no oversight. In the mere 24 hours we've had to review this shameful bill that's being smashed through the House, initial analysis has indicated that decisions on up to 100 projects, including coal and gas mines, could be impacted. It's had no scrutiny, rushed through in the final sitting week of the 47th parliament, all under the cover of a federal budget. It smells fishy indeed.

Here's what should really terrify us; the Prime Minister has now set the expectation that any industry can exert pressure—dollars—to get a legislative exception to environmental laws. What ordinary person in Australia gets to choose which laws apply to them? None. Ordinary people don't have the ear of this government because they're not funding it. They're not funding it. Big corporations are funding this government. The mining companies must be absolutely ecstatic about this as it reminds them that they effectively own this government—let's face it, a government that claims to care about the environment while actively destroying it. The Prime Minister today has literally halted the other business of parliament when we could be passing cost-of-living relief, we could be putting dental cover into Medicare or we could be scrapping student debt. We could actually be helping the citizens of Australia. The Prime Minister has halted the other business of parliament to give environmental destruction the green light. Shame!

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