Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I was looking for some divine intervention. When I think about Senator Roberts, I think that's about the only thing that's ever going to work to change his mind on climate change—some kind of divine intervention.

Anyway, back to the environment laws, Australians are going to have a simple decision to make. There's progress underway, apparently, according to Minister Watt in Senate question time today, in relation to these environment laws themselves. But the Greens have been very clear. We will support, and we encourage the government to bring forward, environment laws that will protect nature and laws that will give an environmental protection authority independence in their decisions over nature. We've seen EPAs in Western Australia and in my home state of Tasmania get overruled constantly by ministers. Unfortunately, the laws as they are written right now allow that to happen.

We've seen very little information on environmental standards. And of course, as my colleagues made it very clear in Senate question time today, native forest logging is not being dealt with in these laws. If you want to follow the Samuel review, then listen to what he had to say about excluding native forest logging from the environment laws and banning it all together. That's what we want to see.

We also want to see the impacts of climate considered in environmental decisions. You can't have environmental laws, be an environment minister or claim you're an environmental party unless you assess the impacts of climate change. Whether it's on our oceans, on our forests, on our communities or on our weather—extreme weather events—climate change is impacting everything.

We are right now, at this point in history, in a biodiversity crisis. We're seeing the physical world break down before our very eyes. We're seeing the climate break down before our very eyes. People are waking up to this, and they expect us to do something. At this point in history, there is no way the Greens will support environment laws that give the government a chance to give themselves a pat on the back and go to the next election saying they've fixed the environment when they clearly haven't. We won't be a part of that.

So the simple question that I have for Australians and the decision they have to make is: who do you trust to deliver strong environment laws that protect nature ahead of the interests of big corporations that are doing the damage in the first place? It's not a party that, as the very last thing it did in the last term of parliament, weakened the environment laws for the salmon industry, while the very first thing it did in this term of government was approve the biggest fossil fuel project in our nation's history—the North West Shelf extension. Australians trust the Greens. We've been a movement for over 50 years, protecting the environment. They're not going to trust the Labor Party who deliver these laws. I say to the Labor Party: come and work with the Greens; let's get laws that protect nature first.