Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

I will not jump to judgment. These are very important issues that Senator Brown has raised. He says that he has raised it with the Tasmanian police commissioner and he reinforces my intuition that it is in fact a matter that the state government should be dealing with. Could I put on the record that the Australian government has worked very productively with the Tasmanian government on putting in place what we regard as incredibly important protection for Tasmania’s environment and doing it in a way that protects jobs, protects agriculture, protects forestry workers’ jobs and balances that against historic levels of protection for biodiversity and for these forests. I will follow it up, as I have promised to do, and report back to the Senate.