Somewhere out there in Tasmania a green activist is living with the terrible fear that someone, somewhere in this state, is running a successful business. Not if they have anything to do with it.
The very foundation of the Greens in Australia was opposing development in Tasmania. They’ve shut down hydro-electricity projects, one of Tasmania’s few abundant resources, and crippled forestry and mining. Now, they’re coming for the state’s burgeoning aquaculture industry.
All because of some stingrays.
Splits between Anthony Albanese and [Environment Minister] Tanya Plibersek are set to widen amid internal ALP concerns about leaking votes and losing seats in Tasmania, with the state’s $1.36bn salmon industry under threat from two drawn-out environmental reviews into an endangered fish.
Such guff plays well enough to the rich snobs and university students of Sandy Bay in Hobart or pensioned-off hippy greybeards in their rural tree-change enclaves. But that’s to ignore that there’s a vast hinterland of workers whose jobs depend on such industries.
In 2004, John Howard successfully pitched the Liberals’ commitment to industry over green activism to an audience of forestry workers in Launceston. The sight of hi-vis vest and hard hat-wearing unionists cheering a Liberal PM sent shockwaves through Labor ranks. Howard went on to win the election with a swing of four per cent and an added five seats.
Albanese is clearly terrified of history repeating. Especially after Plibbers’ recent monumental stuff-up of blocking a billion-dollar gold mine development on the basis of some dodgy ‘Aboriginal cultural business’ made up by even dodgier activists.
After the Prime Minister last week personally intervened to torpedo a deal between Ms Plibersek and the Greens on Labor’s Nature Positive environment law reforms, Mr Albanese is expected to travel to Tasmania next month to allay concerns of hundreds of salmon workers who fear their jobs are at risk.
If those jobs go, workers in three key Tasmanian seats will be furious. Labor might impress wealthy greenies in Franklin, centred on Hobart, but Braddon, Bass (both currently Liberal) and Lyons (which Labor previously held thanks to a popular local member who’s retiring at the next election) won’t be impressed at all.
New polling obtained by the Australian reveals the Liberals would comfortably hold the northwestern Tasmanian seat of Braddon and pick up votes in surrounding electorates if Labor’s self-inflicted salmon stand-off is not resolved. Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Julie Collins’ seat of Franklin would also be significantly affected.
Plibersek scuppered the gold mine because of magic bees. Now, it’s a glorified stingray threatening to shut down the salmon industry.
Ms Plibersek has come under fire over long delays related to two reviews linked to the Maugean skate, including reconsideration of a 2012 Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act determination by the then Labor government approving large-scale salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour. A separate decision by the Threatened Species Scientific Committee on whether the skate should be listed as “critically endangered” was recently delayed by 12 months.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton knows what’s up: just say, ‘Whatever Plibbers does, we’ll do the reverse’.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton visited Strahan and Devonport, where a large proportion of Tasmanian salmon fisheries workers live, to promise locals that a Coalition government would reverse any adverse decisions made by Ms Plibersek […]
Tasmanian Liberal senator Jonno Duniam said […] Mr Dutton had made clear the Coalition would be the “best friend” of mining and other industries including salmon aquaculture, while Labor was pushing an “anti-jobs agenda in lock-step with the Greens”.
Albo is spooked into saying much the same.
Senior government members, including Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, who is close to Mr Albanese, are understood to have expressed private concerns over the political fallout of Ms Plibersek’s two reviews, which some Labor figures believe could replicate Mark Latham’s disastrous 2004 election forestry policy.
Mr Albanese, who in January visited Tassal’s salmon processing plant and last month announced a $28m commitment to improve water quality in Macquarie Harbour, is understood to have made clear his position that Labor supports a thriving salmon industry in Tasmania.
Well, he would say that on the eve of an election, now wouldn’t he?
