2022-11-25
After nine years of battling under a Liberal Government, 2022 will be remembered as the year Australia hit refresh on politics.
By Senator Peter Whish-Wilson
After nine years of battling under a Liberal Government, 2022 will be remembered as the year Australia hit refresh on politics.
The federal election saw the Greens’ Senate vote in Tassie officially come in at 15.48 percent. This was our party’s highest Senate result across all of Australia. The Greens’ magnificent result across the nation can be attributed to so many things – and certainly not all of them transpired in the past 12 months – however it has been a cracker of a year, and at the end of the day what we can all be proud of is that the future is Green.
Healthy oceans
The burning of fossil fuels is literally cooking our oceans and killing marine ecosystems everywhere, but nowhere else has this been more politicised than on the Great Barrier Reef. My Greens colleagues and I fought hard over the past year to expose the Morrison Government’s lies about the true state of this fragile ecosystem – and you can bet we’ll keep close eyes on exactly what action the Albanese Government does (or doesn’t!) take moving forward.
This includes continuing our campaign to stop new offshore oil and gas and the risky seismic testing that comes with it, and denouncing our reckless governments every single time they open up new ocean acreages for fossil fuel companies to exploit!
In another case of exposing how climate inaction is wreaking havoc in our oceans, in Senate Estimates I uncovered unprecedented intervention by the Morrison Government relating to fisheries permits. In what was described as a “shocking” development by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, the federal government is set to spend $20m on buying out vessel permits in the south-east trawl fishery because the climate crisis is affecting population numbers of some species, making current fishing levels unsustainable.
In the lead up to the federal election, I announced the Greens’ plan to promote and protect the Great Southern Reef, which includes key measures to help support the restoration of our Tasmanian giant kelp forests. Kelp forests – which sequester more carbon than their terrestrial counterparts – are a defining feature of the Great Southern Reef, but have been virtually ignored by previous governments. I’m now pleased to report that I’ve already taken significant steps in the new parliament towards an integrated approach to managing the health of the Great Southern Reef.
Agriculture
The Greens believe that the climate emergency will be the single biggest threat to the livelihoods of Australian farmers and people living in rural and regional areas in coming years. More frequent and more severe weather events will lower agricultural yields and dramatically impact the economies of these communities. The climate crisis is a food security crisis.
While the right-wing scaremongers busy themselves with culture war debates about whether soy milk is milk (cue the Meat Labelling Senate Inquiry), only the Greens are acting on the true threat to farmers: climate change.
Other areas in agriculture I’ve been focusing on include building Australia’s budding hemp industry (the Greens were the only ones to outline a plan to supercharge hemp production and successfully move a motion in parliament to support this fledgling industry), in addition to looking at seaweed farming and feral deer management.
Waste and recycling
Too much unnecessary waste is polluting our oceans and ending up in landfill, while Australians are missing out on jobs because successive governments have refused to take simple actions to build a circular economy. The Greens have led the policy debate in parliament and worked closely with the community and the waste and recycling industry to tackle our plastics crisis over many years.
During the election campaign, I launched the Greens’ plan to transition to a circular economy – one that could generate $175 billion in direct benefit to the economy and prevent 16.7 million tonnes of CO2 entering Australia’s atmosphere by 2040.
The Greens’ plan for building a circular economy by 2030 will help avoid waste in the first place, work to prevent it ending up in landfill or our oceans, while creating thousands of research, manufacturing, waste and recycling jobs. I look forward to doing everything I can to deliver on this work in the new parliament.
Lutruwita/Tasmania
In real terms, the Greens’ Senate vote in lutruwita/Tasmania climbed almost 25 percent from 2019. I’m honoured that my below the line first-preference vote was the highest of all Tasmanian senators, including Eric Abetz who served as a Tasmanian senator for 28 years.
From launching a plan to protect our state’s forests and time spent on the ground defending the ancient rainforests in takayna/Tarkine from being flattened for a proposed toxic tailings dam, to campaigning on the loss of threatened species’ federally funded recovery plans, to exposing (through Senate Estimates) a controversial project to expand salmon farming into Commonwealth waters, and shining a spotlight on the island’s emerging seaweed and hemp industry potential, it’s been a busy year for me at home in Tassie.
A highlight was taking my kelp forest documentary on the road during the election campaign. Over 100 events in about six months meant there wasn’t much of Tassie that went unvisited! Achieving such positive results after months of on-the-ground, authentic campaigning like this with fantastic candidates is the type of thing that keeps me optimistic about where our movement is heading. It’s a privilege to be re-elected to serve this magnificent state for another term!