Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A couple of weeks ago, I went out into the southern part of the Tarkine, home for tens of thousands of years to the Tarkiner people. When I was out there I caught up with some great folk who are bravely defending some of the most magnificent forests on our planet. These forests are in a landscape that is a rich tapestry of Aboriginal cultural history, they are some of the most carbon-dense forests on the planet and they are home to some of the most beautiful and unique creatures on the planet. And of course the reason that these folk are out in these forests to receive visitors, such as me—and who are still out in those forests today, I might add—is because the logging industry of Tasmania, cheered on by the neo-Liberals in this place from the Liberal and National parties and the Australian Labor Party, have devastated that landscape, and I do mean devastated that landscape. Remember, they're not doing it for money, because every tree that's cut down actually costs the Tasmanian taxpayer money. There is no economic case to underpin native forest logging in Tasmania.

I particularly want to thank Viola, who I met for the first time nearly 50 metres up a giant Eucalyptus obliqua, a tree, and Viola was camped on a platform 50 metres up that tree. I somehow managed to haul myself, with nothing more than a few ropes and some prussik knots, nearly 50 metres up that tree. I lost a bit of bark, as we say in Tasmania—a little bit of skin—off the fingers on the way up and down. But if those people weren't out there, believe me, that beautiful, magnificent standing giant of our forests would have lost a lot more than bark; it would have lost its very existence. So I want to pay tribute to and thank every single person who's stood up to defend those forests, the creatures in them, the carbon in them and the Aboriginal cultural heritage that surrounds them, particularly, the people—including former senator Bob Brown—who have been arrested over the latter part of last year, and as recently as Monday this week, while putting their bodies on the line to defend those places. They are true heroes. Logging those forests is a crime against nature and a crime against our climate.

It reminds me of what's going on inside the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage area, where right now the Liberal government of Tasmania, under Premier Peter Gutwein, is actually privatising our World Heritage area. He's flogging it off for a pittance to tourism developers who gain exclusive rights. That means that we can't go to a place like Halls Island in Lake Malbena anymore, which is inside the Walls of Jerusalem National Park, inside the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage area—a place we have all agreed to protect on behalf of all of humanity because of its wilderness values and its cultural values. We're not allowed into our own World Heritage area. It is verboten for us to go to Halls Island because it has been hived off for a pittance to a tourism developer driven by greed and profit. Ordinary Australians are now forbidden from setting foot on Halls Island after having had that island open for any of us to go to since Europeans arrived here in this country—I mean, seriously.

I used to work as a wilderness guide. I did many seasons of wilderness guiding in Tasmania. I know two things. We need to protect wilderness for its own sake. That wilderness was there long before humanity ever set foot on this planet and it will be there long after we're gone, as long as we look after it. That's the first thing I know. And the second thing is this: for those in this place, and it is most of you, who can't see the value in anything unless you can attach a dollar sign and a job to it—I used to be a wilderness guide, as I said, and people used to come out in the wilderness with me and they would pay good dollars. They'd employ lots of people. They pay for a wilderness experience; they don't pay for mechanised noise like the helicopters that will service Halls Island.