2024-10-04
By Peter Whish-Wilson
Senator for Tasmania
HEALTHY OCEANS
In April this year the world’s fourth mass global coral bleaching event was declared, with coral reefs the world over recording catastrophic impacts following sustained sea temperatures.
The Great Barrier Reef was not immune from these impacts, with arguably the worst bleaching event on record being declared in March, the fifth in eight years. Following the official declaration that a bleaching event was underway, Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson travelled to Heron Island in Queensland with world-renowned coral expert Professor Terry Hughes to witness the destruction. This trip was documented by the Guardian Australia.
The Greens have initiated Senate debates, asked questions in the Senate and at estimates and driven parliamentary FOIs to highlight the government’s duplicity on reef management and promoting fossil fuel development. It’s clear the only action that will safeguard the future of the Reef is an end to new coal and gas, and this is what the Greens will continue to fight for in parliament.
Beyond fighting for the future of the Great Barrier Reef, the Greens continued our work from a critical Senate inquiry in 2023 to advocate for government funding to tackle the epidemic of the expansion of climate change-driven marine invasive species like centrostephanus (long-spined sea urchin), to better protect critical marine habitats like our majestic, but fast-disappearing, giant kelp forests.
The Greens also continued to put the recognition of the Great Southern Reef on the agenda in our Federal parliament, establishing a “Parliamentary Friends of Great Southern Reef” in Canberra and hosting multiple events in Parliament focused on highlighting the significant role this ecosystem plays in the health of our oceans and coastal communities.
This year the Greens also fought against Labor’s “Sea Dumping” legislation, holding it off in the Senate for over a week, until the Liberals and Labor teamed up to ram it through. Labor’s Sea Dumping bill is a warped and twisted piece of legislation that allows fossil fuel corporations to import and export carbon pollution to be pumped under the seabed. The Albanese Government’s introduction and passing of this Bill is just another in a long line of actions demonstrating its complete and utter capture by the multinational corporations fuelling the climate crisis.
The ocean is, it seems, the last frontier of big new oil and gas fuel development. The Greens continued to campaign with environmental groups across the nation to finally put an end to offshore seismic testing and oil and gas exploration in our oceans. In April Peter, along with Victorian state MP’s, attended the biggest protest paddle out in our nation’s history in Torquay to stop oil and gas drilling off the coast of Victoria and Tasmania.
The Greens have also been active in community and parliamentary campaigning, asking Senate questions and pushing the Albanese government to honour its election promise to finally stop offshore Petroleum Exploration Permit 11 (PEP11) off the coast of New South Wales.
We are pleased to report that after more than 6 years of constant campaigning this happened recently in parliament. Stopping PEP11 is historic, as it is the first fossil fuel project stopped by government on the back of community opposition! We are also getting active working across Party Room to stop Woodside drilling near Scott Reef in WA, which would facilitate the Browse and Burrup Projects, the biggest fossil fuel development in our nation’s history - equivalent to 10 years of our national emissions.
Peter presented at the White Sharks Global conference in Port Lincoln in November 2023 on the need for governments to invest more in shark conservation and better approaches to mitigating the risk of shark encounters with ocean goers. He then attended a timely scientific voyage to the Neptune Islands in South Australia at the start of this year, to study White Shark behaviour and conservation, including the trialling of new ‘non-lethal” technologies to protect ocean goers without harming sharks.
This summer saw a sad spate of fatal shark encounters in South Australia, and we were very active in the public debate and lobbied all South Australian local government councillors, state and federal MP’s to avoid knee jerk policies that harm protected White Sharks. As a surfer himself and previous Chair of a national Senate inquiry in shark mitigation, Peter spoke at a meeting of all South Australian Mayors in May urging them to fully protect sharks and urgently invest in other safety measures/technologies.
Alongside other NGOs applying pressure we are pleased to report we carried the day for shark conservation! Under intense pressure to cull endangered White Sharks, the South Australian government resisted calls to kill sharks and is now working with experts and looking at evidence-based research on how to best protect ocean goers. We are monitoring this situation closely.
Lastly, with the arrest of Captain Paul Watson in Greenland by the Danish Government, Peter’s office has spearheaded a campaign working with the Paul Watson Foundation to have Paul freed. Paul is being held in prison pending potential extradition to Japan for disrupting their illegal whaling activities in the Southern Ocean from over a decade ago. It is no coincidence Paul was on his way to monitor Japan’s new whaling campaign in the North Pacific including the infuriating slaughter of endangered Finn whales.
Peter has co-ordinated a Party Room letter to Prime Minister Albanese calling for public advocacy on behalf of Paul Watson and helped get signatories from the Australian parliament to send to the Danish PM calling for Paul’s immediate release as well as giving a number of speeches in parliament and asking questions to our ministers in the Senate. We are waiting for an impending decision now from Danish courts. If extradited Paul could spend 14 years in jail for protecting our precious wildlife, which is outrageous but a sad sign of the times.
REDUCING WASTE & IMPROVING RECYCLING
On 28 February 2024, the Greens worked to establish our third major Senate inquiry into the effectiveness of government policies to improve waste reduction and recycling rates, reduce the impacts of plastic pollution on our environment and human health, and legislate a framework for a true ‘circular economy’ or zero waste future. Peter is the Chair of this inquiry which is specifically looking at holding the Albanese government to account in meeting its election commitments.
The inquiry’s focus includes looking at unintended consequences of new waste export regulations, holding big producers and retailers of plastic packaging to account by pushing regulated extended producer responsibility/product stewardship schemes, the need for waste avoidance and reduction efforts to play a greater role in government programs, the impact of batteries and embedded batteries on our resource recovery sector and the Albanese government’s lack of progress on the implementation of circular economy deliverables. The inquiry reports back in March 2025.
The Greens have consistently held the line against the lack of urgent action on packaging reform promised by the Albanese government when it came to office. These rules for mandated recycled content and design standards were promised as a core deliverable by Labor but are now significantly overdue at time of writing (Sept 2024). The Greens will continue to push for strong, mandated packaging regulations and mandated product stewardship schemes for packaging in our federal Parliament.
The Greens have also been active on the PFAS issue, asking questions at Senate estimates on this matter of public importance, including regarding the impacts of PFAS on marine life and ecosystems caused by contamination from water outflows along our coastlines.
AGRICULTURE
The Greens spent the first half of 2024 reviewing the Albanese Government’s proposed Biosecurity Protection Levy legislation, including participating in the Senate inquiry on this bill.
The Greens support significant and new biosecurity funding that ensures Australia has robust threat abatement measures in place to safeguard our communities, the environment and industry into the future, but the bill the government flagged for parliament to specifically tax farmers to fund biosecurity measures was poor policy in both principle and design and ultimately the Greens Party Room agreed that it should be rejected. It’s reasonable farmers were asking why they should pay a levy when the food and fibre they produce passes up through a supply chain that numerous other interests benefit from – including the profiteering supermarket duopoly who rake in huge profits but wouldn’t have to contribute a cent.
In addition to the biosecurity protection levy debate, hemp and supporting the extension of industrial hemp as fibre programs has been a core priority in agriculture for the Greens this year.
The Greens have also continued to hold the government to account on its management of the review into the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) and have worked collaboratively and constructively with the government to ensure the issues of workplace culture and industry-capture are permanently resolved.
Greens-led Antarctic Division Senate inquiry
A Senate inquiry into funding mismanagement of the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) was established in August 2023. It came following the Albanese Government’s failure to acknowledge rising fears within the AAD about what science programs would be axed as a result of the Division having to cut its operating budget by $25 million. This Greens-led senate inquiry resulted in cross-party support for a re-focus on Antarctic science at the AAD and secured its first tangible win in May 2024, with an additional 120 days of dedicated marine science expeditions over two years funded in the Federal Budget.
Freeing Julian Assange
We all shared a massive win when Julian Assange was recently freed in June 2024. Peter was an original co-founder of the Parliamentary Friends of ‘Bring Julian Assange Home’ Group back in 2018. It has been a long and tiring campaign working with many amazing people and a key highlight was attending a cross-parliamentary delegation to Washington D.C. (along with Senator David Shoebridge) in September last year, lobbying key US Senators, Congress and law makers for his release. Julian’s release against all odds showed the importance of people power and politicians putting differences aside to work on critical campaigns in the public interest.
lutruwita/Tasmania
This year saw the Albanese government continue to delay the urgent action needed to avoid the extinction of the Maugean skate. New data released in August 2024 showed that the government’s own Threatened Species Scientific Committee (TSSC) recommended the removal of salmon farming from Macquarie Harbour to save the Maugean skate from extinction. Tasmania and the skate needs the Albanese government to listen to its own experts and end salmon farming in Macquarie harbour for good. We have been relentless in parliament highlighting the plight of the skate and holding the government to account on their commitment for no new extinctions.
The Greens have also been focused on the protection of Robbins Island from an inappropriate wind farm development that would have significant impacts on a number of migratory birds, including the Orange-Bellied Parrot. The development would also impact the habitat of one of the last refuges of facial tumour-free Tasmanian Devil, an “insurance” population that must be protected to ensure the future survival of this iconic species.
- Pete