Jacqui Lambie and Greens Leader Rosalie Woodruff weigh in on the future of Macquarie Harbour salmon farming.
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00:00 Your comments, Jackie Lambie, about salmon farming have clearly angered the West Coast.
00:05 Mayor, do you believe salmon farming can have a future in Macquarie Harbour and if so, what
00:09 needs to change? Yeah, there's certainly a future for salmon farming in Tasmania but when you go
00:15 from a thousand tonnes in 2004 and we're now looking at 20,000 tonnes sitting down there in
00:21 Macquarie Harbour in 2015 and I'm not sure what it is today, I think we're a little bit overstocking
00:26 and we're putting Brant, Tasmania at risk. That is my problem. Okay, we can do this and we can do it
00:32 well but this has all happened, this is why the benders and that left. They could see what was
00:37 going on, they've sold out to the internationals knowing very well, yeah we've made more than enough
00:41 out of this, we're backing off, we're leaving. Okay, and all we've done is seen those numbers
00:47 go up. That is, it's not sustainable the way it is and I'll tell you this, if the Mayor of the
00:53 North West Coast has had a problem, maybe he should have picked up the phone and either rang me
00:57 directly or B) contacted my office, which he did not. So I have to ask, how much of a problem does
01:03 he actually believe he has or he just wants to throw his thing out there? Right now, if I was him,
01:08 I'd be going after those royalties that they get from there, which he's always bitching about to me.
01:12 $80 million they got from royalties in Tasmania last year, okay, and they get less than $2 million
01:18 of that down the West Coast. So, you want to talk about people and your people down
01:23 there, how about you go in for some more royalties so you can give them more, so you can actually
01:27 help them out more economically down there. That's what I'll be doing. Thank you. Rosalie Woodruff on
01:33 salmon. The Greens have been strong critics of the industry and its practices. Now, there have
01:39 been suggestions they could work better potentially environmentally in further offshore, more dynamic
01:46 waters. That would obviously preclude Macquarie Hover, however, or even an industry to be developed
01:52 on land. Can you see yourselves supporting either of those possibilities? The Greens have never been
01:59 a strong critic of the salmon industry. We've been a strong critic of the government's failure to
02:04 regulate the salmon industry to protect the community and to protect the marine environment.
02:09 And so, here we are in a situation, as Jackie said, where in 2004, salmon was being sustainably
02:15 farmed in Macquarie Hover, no problems, and it was like that for a very long time. And then it went
02:20 up and up and up, and it was 3,000 or 4,000 tonnes a year back then, and then it went up to 21,000
02:27 tonnes a year with tassel and human in there. And that was like five years ago, and since then,
02:34 we've been monitoring it year on year from our IMS scientists, and that ancient species is about
02:41 to go extinct. And so, that's the situation we're in, and that's a failure of the government,
02:46 the Liberals. It's a mess under the Liberals. And so, we don't have a problem with the salmon
02:52 industry. We don't have a problem with any farmer, but it's the fact that they're not being regulated
02:56 to protect the environment. And so, we are really concerned about that going into the northwest
03:01 area. Absolutely, that would be a shocking situation, given the beautiful fishing industries,
03:08 given the beautiful nature up there, the marine environment. So, we want the industry to be
03:13 properly regulated. Does that mean then that on-landing is the future for it? Well, on-landing
03:20 is the future in other countries. That's where they're heading, and that's our policy to
03:25 transition there. Obviously, that's not going to happen straight away. Obviously, there's got to
03:29 be a time, but we think that the Liberals and the Labor Party are throwing regional communities
03:35 under the bus because they're not seeing the writing on the wall with these industries.
03:39 They're not sustainable. And so, there should be a plan to help the West Coast to get a job
03:47 industry when the salmon industry falls over in Macquarie Harbour. It's just not the place to
03:54 farm salmon, and it's also regional Tasmania are not the place to clear, fell, and burn native
04:01 forests, but it is the place to have plantation hardwoods and to support regional communities
04:06 to gear up, to tool up, and to go into that area. Depending, Rosalie Woodruff, on which level of
04:14 government is responsible for the decision, if there is a government decision that was, for
04:18 instance, to force salmon farming out of Macquarie Harbour, would it then be incumbent on that same
04:24 level of government? Because there's got to be an element of sovereign risk in there. To help
04:31 fund that industry, well, perhaps on landing or some other alternative for them.
04:36 Look, here we are talking about JBS. This is the world's largest protein producer. They are a
04:43 multi, multi, multi, multi-billion dollar industry. You know, I think these industries have a
04:49 responsibility when they're working with workers to actually support those workers into areas which
04:57 are sustainable. They're just choosing the cheapest way because we are not putting the standards in
05:02 place. Other countries, those industries are working in other countries, and they're working
05:07 to higher standards. So we've got to stop being afraid of actually putting the same standards.
05:12 We've got to value Tasmania, value what we've got. And we should do that because other countries
05:18 value what they've got. So all we're saying is, why don't we lift our level of pride in ourselves
05:23 and understand we've got something so special. We can just increase our environmental regulations
05:29 like other countries do. Not more, actually be world's best practice.
05:33 Yeah, I think what people need to know, it's not about profits. It's not about
05:36 internationals coming down here and profiting off us, you know, if we lose that brand Tasmania.
05:43 We're not, I'm not certainly, we're not certainly telling them to go and shut down the seven farms.
05:46 What I'm having, what I'm asking them to do is to make sure it's regulated properly and have a
05:50 look at the numbers, the stock that you are using, because quite frankly, we are going to come unstuck with it.
05:55 you
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