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

Nearly eight years ago, in my first senators' statement in this chamber, I talked about the need to tackle plastic pollution in our oceans. This is one of the key reasons I wanted to be a senator, and it surprised me at the time that this issue hadn't even been raised in the Australian Senate at that time. I'm very pleased to announce today that Victoria has now committed to a container deposit scheme, the last state in this country to do so. Back then, eight years ago, it was only South Australia. I want to thank the thousands of community members and campaigners around this country who have pushed for container deposit schemes and other action on plastic pollution.

We still have a long way to go. The Greens have a bill before this Senate to ban single-use plastics and to make the Packaging Covenant, the targets that have been put in place by industry, mandatory so that we can get on with this job and protect our oceans and the marine life that is so profoundly impacted by not just plastics that we can see but microplastics in our ocean.

Amongst some other good news in the doom and gloom that a lot of Australians are seeing at the moment is the announcement just yesterday that the Queensland government, working with the federal government, have now introduced smart drum lines on the Great Barrier Reef. For too long now the Queensland government have been using lethal drum lines to kill sharks—drum lines that don't make people safer and that have been weapons of mass destruction for our precious marine life. I want to congratulate Humane Society International, the Australian Marine Conservation Society and a whole bunch of campaigners in this country who have been working hard to protect our marine life. I initiated and chaired a Senate inquiry into this, the first one of its kind in the world, looking at shark mitigation. I urge the Queensland government, when they roll out these smart drum lines that give us more information about sharks and largely protect marine creatures, to take the next step, remove their shark nets from Queensland beaches and put smart drum lines in place across the rest of the state. Smart drum lines are not a long-term solution, but they're a very good next step and interim solution to protecting marine life, helping protect surfers, swimmers and ocean-goers, and getting the balance right.

I note with great interest, and I'm very happy to say, that, while Greta Thunberg is known around the world for her climate action, conservationists in Tasmania have now named a number of the state's largest eucalypts after her and a number of other climate campaigners. These trees are mountain ash, and some of them are many metres in diameter. These giant eucalypts are in the Huon Valley, and they've been documented by state conservation groups who've been monitoring these trees for some years as some of the biggest on the planet. Of course, the reason these trees have been named after prominent climate campaigners such as Greta Thunberg is that they play such a critical role in sequestering carbon and reducing the greenhouse gases that are warming our planet. Tasmania has some of the most carbon-rich forests on the planet, and it's highly symbolic that these trees that we want to protect, which thousands of tourists go and visit each year, are promoted to the rest of the world.

On that point, I note with much sadness that, just in the last 48 hours, police, Forestry Tasmania and contractors have gone into some of the most beautiful, magnificent rainforests we have left in this county, in the Tarkine. I was there just last week. In fact, I've been there three times over the summer break, visiting the forest protest camps, taking my family and last week taking one of the country's best pro surfers and a documentary filmmaker through the Tarkine. When you walk into these spectacular rainforests, it has a profound physical effect on you. The light changes. The air temperature changes. With the colours and scents, it has a very enchanting effect on you. These rainforests in the Tarkine are some of the most carbon-rich forests on the planet.

It's particularly galling to see the spin being put out today by timber barons and logging companies, including Britton Timbers, that somehow logging some of the most precious unprotected rainforests left on the planet is going to be good for climate change. That's not what the IPCC says. The IPCC clearly says that protecting high-conservation forests is one of the most important things we can do if we're going to reduce emissions globally. These forests are visited by hundreds and thousands of tourists every year.

It is insanity—in fact, it's criminal—in this day and age to be logging these forests.

I want to give a shout-out to the forest protesters. Six earth defenders were arrested yesterday, standing in front of a tree peacefully protesting, saying it is insanity in this day and age to be logging these rainforests. I'm disappointed with the editorials that I have seen in both The Examiner and The Advocate newspapers in Tasmania this week helping peddle the misinformation of the logging companies, that somehow this is good for climate change. On what planet is logging some of the most carbon-rich forests that we have left—not just in this country but around the world—going to be good for climate change? It's insanity.

I know that a lot of tourists visit other parts of Tasmania and not the Tarkine. The Tarkine is unprotected. It is not promoted. But there is so much we could do to help bring in new industries and new jobs to Tasmania. It's heartbreaking that after years of peace in our forests in Tasmania that the new Premier of Tasmania, Peter Gutwein, the climate change minister, who only two weeks ago said we need to do more to act on climate change, is allowing these age-old myrtle trees, sassafras trees, Huon pines and celery top pines to fall. They are falling as we speak in the Senate today. Even though these brave defenders have tried to slow it down—they have now been arrested—these trees are falling, and the world is watching. These trees are owned by all Tasmanians—indeed, all Australians and everyone around the world. They are of global significance. The Tarkine is some of the last remnants of the Gondwana rainforest and country on this planet. It is the largest track of cool temperate rainforest left in the world, and it is almost totally unprotected. We have hundreds of thousands of hectares of high-conservation forests in Tasmania that are unprotected and that are available for logging. We have a government that is hell-bent on logging some of these precious rainforests in a time of climate emergency. It is utter madness.

I tell you what: something has changed in this country in the last month. Australians have seen the tangible impacts of this climate emergency—a drier Australia, a hotter Australia—and they understand the simple link between saving trees and allowing trees to do their job to take carbon out of the atmosphere and breathe the life-giving oxygen that we all need on this planet. It's not that hard. In fact, it's very simple. We need to leave these rainforests alone. We need to protect them. We need to do everything we can to make sure that fire, the biggest risk to our World Heritage forests in Tasmania, to our forests right across the eastern seaboard and in fact all around this country, is reduced. We act on climate to reduce the risks, and we do everything we can to protect the biosecurity and the wildlife that's been so tragically and devastatingly impacted by these fires in Australia in the last six months.

In Tasmania, in three out of the last six summers we've had devastating fires in areas that have never seen fire before. This is the backdrop: 11 million hectares of Australia burnt, including some magnificent areas of biodiversity and forest. This is the backdrop: a cynical state government—a Liberal government in Tasmania—logging some of the most precious rainforests left on the planet as we speak. It is insanity, it is criminal and it's got to stop.