Inside Politics: Why the environment is MIA in this election

Salmon farming is not something most voters consider when they go to the polls on election day. But for Tasmanian voters, it is a huge and often divisive issue. This debate about the environmental effects of salmon farming is playing out in an election where any other discussion of the environment is pretty much non-existent.

Which is curious because energy policy goes hand-in-hand with the environment and that is a decisive topic of this election. It’s also curious that the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, has been very quiet during the campaign.

National environment and climate reporter Bianca Hall and energy correspondent Mike Foley join Jacqueline Maley to discuss.

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is inside politics. I'm Jacqueline Maley, it's Tuesday, April 29th.
Salmon farming is not something most voters consider when they
go to the polls on Election Day. But for Tasmanian voters,
it is a huge and often divisive issue. Some Tasmanians

(00:22):
believe the industry is polluting and unsustainable. Others see it
as vital local commerce, which is keeping many rural Tasmanians employed.
This debate about the environmental effects of salmon farming is
playing out in an election where any other discussion of
the environment is pretty much non-existent. Which is curious because
energy policy goes hand in hand with the environment. And

(00:43):
that is a decisive topic of this election. And it
is also curious that the federal Environment minister, Tanya Plibersek,
has been very quiet during this campaign. So to get
us into all of this, we are going to talk
to national and environment climate reporter Bianca Hall and energy
correspondent Mike Foley. Welcome, guys.

S2 (01:03):
Hi, Jackie.

S3 (01:04):
Hi. Good to be here.

S1 (01:05):
Bianca, you've just been in Tasmania on a tour of
the important electorates there. Can you tell us why these
Tasmanian seats are so pivotal for this election?

S3 (01:14):
Sure. Well, I think Tasmanians would probably be forgiven for
feeling like they get a bit forgotten during election campaigns
and more broadly. But there's five seats in Tasmania and
two depending on who you ask. Three are very much
in play this election. So we've got bass in the
north east corner of the state, Braddon along the west coast,

(01:34):
Franklin on the southern tip, Clark, which covers Hobart and Lyons,
which covers the centre of the state and the east coast.
And two of these seats are pretty nominally safe. You've
got Franklin, which is held by Fisheries Minister Julie Collins
on 13.7%. Andrew Wilkie, The Independent, holds Clark with a
commanding 20.8% margin, but two of them are ultra marginal

(01:58):
and really in play. So Lyons is held by labor
on just 0.9%, and Bridget Archer for the liberals holds
bass on 1.4%. Even though Braddon is on 8% held
by a Liberal MP, Gavin Pearce, who's retiring, labor absolutely
thinks it's in with a shot in Braddon as well.

S1 (02:17):
Okay, so some of these seats have very slim margins
and salmon farming has become a very central election issue
in Tasmania. Can you tell us why it's getting so
much attention?

S3 (02:27):
Well, I think the big thing obviously is the mortgage
and skate. This is the prehistoric creature that is endangered,
and it only occurs in waters where salmon farming is
occurring around Macquarie Harbour.

S4 (02:40):
The number of Morgan skate in Macquarie Harbour halved in
just seven years.

S3 (02:46):
But there was a mass mortality event in summer this
year that killed more than 1 million fish in the
salmon farms. That was probably the thing that got most
people's attention. Yeah, there was some pretty arresting footage of
huge amounts of salmon dead inside the pens, which were
taken by drone footage.

S4 (03:02):
Live salmon being siphoned out of a pen and sealed
away with dead salmon. It's a vision that's alarmed the
RSPCA and now the animal welfare charity.

S3 (03:11):
And there was also the pretty revolting prospect of chunks
of salmon washing up on beaches surrounding the pens. People
walking their dogs and coming across enormous chunks of salmon. Pretty, um, yeah,
pretty gross stuff.

S5 (03:23):
From oily chunks washing up on this very beach after
an unprecedented mass salmon die off event.

S1 (03:30):
But, Mike, even before the sort of mass extinction event
that we had, basically, there's a lot of people who
think salmon farming is dirty and polluting the waters and
that it's sort of almost like a battery hen type situation.
Tell us a bit about the industry more generally.

S2 (03:45):
Well, the concerns with the industry around its environmental impact, Jackie,
are about and Bianca will add to this, I'm sure,
but it's about the impact that salmon, let's call it
waste from the fish that they get fed. Fish food
there they they eat that, they expel it. And that
adds nutrients to the environment and especially into that one

(04:08):
location of Macquarie Harbour. That nutrient imbalance is creating algal
growth and an imbalance in the ecosystem that sucks oxygen
out of the water, basically. And that's one impact that
makes it harder for the Morgan skate to survive, makes
it harder for them to breed as well. This is
in very simple terms, and as Bianca rightly pointed out,

(04:30):
it's so rare it's classed as critically endangered. Top red
level alert of dropping off the face of the planet,
that there's this open question about whether this practice in
that one confined harbour can continue, or if the risk
is so great that it's too much of a threat
to the future survival of this prehistoric creature that occurs
nowhere else in the world. More broadly than that, though,

(04:54):
there is the same concerns, but spread out all across
the let's call it an industrial precinct. I mean, is
that an okay term to use, Bianca, where there's farming
up and down the coast of Tassie as well, and
there's similar issues about water degradation, let's call it around
the salmon farms in the ocean environment as well, around
the coast.

S3 (05:13):
Yeah, I'd absolutely agree with the industrial descriptor. You know,
going past these places on boats and we're on two boats.
One of them was an enormous commercial cruise that went
through Macquarie Harbour and up the Gordon River. But we
also went on a smaller boat on the East coast
and went pretty close to the pens. And they are enormous.
They measure up to 240m in circumference. They're huge things

(05:36):
and they go down about 20m underneath the surface of
the water, so they're pretty tightly packed in there as
they get bigger. Apparently you can get about 10,000 adult fish.
I just say one thing. Just you're talking about the
marine environment in Macquarie Harbour. Mike, it's really interesting because
you've got the river water on top in Macquarie Harbour

(05:56):
and then the saltwater underneath. And so the river water
is really quite dense when you're on a boat and
you're going through Macquarie Harbour, it looks like you're going
through black tea. There's not a lot of oxygen in
the top layer of the water, so it's actually more
prone to a low oxygenation rates than normal ocean water.
And every couple of years they get a big sort

(06:19):
of swell of ocean water coming through underneath that oxygenates
that marine environment. But in recent years they've been not
having that kind of effect. So there is a trial
underway of $37.5 million, Reoxygenation trial where the the federal
government has, um, got essentially barges that are pumping oxygen

(06:40):
into the marine environment trying to create that effect that
the saltwater flows have.

S4 (06:45):
The emoji and skate is only found in Macquarie Harbour
on Tasmania's west coast. The state and federal governments are
funding a captive breeding program in an effort to save
the endangered species.

S1 (06:57):
Yeah, I want to talk about the upside of the
industry as well. I mean, we just want to add
that in for balance. Obviously, there's a lot of concerns
over its environmental effects, but it's a popular industry amongst
some people in Tasmania because it's a job creator and
it's good for the economy. Can you tell us a
little bit about that?

S3 (07:14):
Yeah, I mean, the industry is valued at about $1.37
billion a year. It's a big money earner. It also employs,
depending on who you ask, between 1700 and 5000 people
in Tasmania in full time and casual jobs, and some
of them direct jobs, some of them indirect jobs. But yeah,
Salmon Tasmania says that it employs about half the population.

(07:35):
Working population in Strahan for example.

S1 (07:38):
Mhm. Okay. So there's basically a conflict between the environmental
concerns and those who would rather overlook those concerns or
dismiss them as less important than the job creation and
the economic benefits of the industry. I mean, Anthony Albanese
has very much come down on one side of this debate.

S6 (07:54):
Indeed, this industry is worth $1 billion. Very vital for Tasmania.
Vital for Australia and vital for our national interest.

S1 (08:06):
We saw him, I think, in February. Go down to
Tasmania and eat a salmon supper very, very obviously for
the cameras. What was he sort of doing down there
and where was he, Bianca?

S3 (08:15):
He was at a barbecue at Petuna Seafood in Devonport.
You could say he was putting his money where his
mouth was. He was alongside Senator Anne Urquhart, who is
a labor senator for Tasmania, has three years left of
her term and has been convinced to run for Braddon
for labor, with the retiring MP Gavin Pearce stepping aside.

(08:38):
So the Prime Minister was very clearly saying, you know,
I'm here and Urquhart is here, and we fully back
this industry and the workers and the union that represents them.

S1 (08:48):
Yeah. Okay. And then it was about a week after
that visit to Britain that the mass salmon death occurred
that you spoke about before. So it's always been or
particularly recently been a very controversial, perhaps divisive issue locally
in Tasmania. But more recently it leapt onto the national
debate and we saw Senator Hanson-Young, Greens senator, bring a
prop into the upper chamber. What did she do? Mike,

(09:10):
it was a sort of pretty stinky stunt.

S2 (09:13):
Yeah, it was visually arresting. Let's say she brought she
went to the local Costco in Canberra, picked up a
whole gutted dead salmon. It was defrosted. She snuck it
in to the chamber underneath some copies of The Age
and Sydney Morning Herald print editions. Fantastic use of the product.

S1 (09:32):
What a what a great honor for us. Yeah, well,
they always say that we're tomorrow's fish and chip wrapping paper. Right.
So this is a slight.

S3 (09:38):
This is to prove that wasn't it.

S1 (09:40):
Yeah. It's a bit of a tweak.

S7 (09:42):
A rotten, stinking extinction. Salmon. Extinction. Salmon. Senator. Senator Hanson-Young.
Remove the prop from the chamber.

S2 (09:53):
It was a piscatorial stunt, but it had a serious
meaning for her and the opponents of a move that
Anthony Albanese spearheaded. She was protesting the government's reform to
environment law that was basically safeguarding the Macquarie Harbour salmon
farming industry. It was it's very complicated and targeted, but

(10:17):
it was essentially removing the right of third parties like
environmental groups and so on, to challenge the approval that
was given to the Macquarie Harbour farming operations. It's it is,
as you can imagine, obscure. National environment law. And it's
and there's a lot of conjecture over how nasty a

(10:39):
reform that is for future cases, whether it might block
challenges to coal mines, that that might be needed to
be waged, and other people claim that it's just fixing
up a loophole. If the the project has been approved
in the past, why should it be open to incessant
challenges in the future? A lot of debate over it,
but Sarah Hanson-Young was making a point that she she

(11:00):
vehemently disapproved of the move.

S1 (11:02):
Yeah. Where is environment Minister Tanya Plibersek in all of this?
Have we seen her say anything about the salmon farming issue?

S2 (11:09):
Jackie, you told me she's been nowhere on it really,
especially since this federal election campaign kicked off four weeks ago.
She had a decision on her desk for many months
over the future of those salmon farming operations in Macquarie Harbour,
and she kicked the can down the road and extended
the deadline, which is in her right to do. But

(11:30):
she extended the deadline way out beyond the polling day
in the federal election in a move to neutralise the issue.
As she did, that Anthony Albanese essentially pre-empted her decision
and said to the industry and to Tasmania, don't worry,
I'm guaranteeing jobs in the industry. And since then, Tanya
Plibersek hasn't really played a public role in advocating for

(11:53):
or against the decision or the industry.

S1 (11:55):
Labor seems to be treading very softly, to say the least,
on environmental issues in this election. Would you agree with that, Mike?

S2 (12:03):
I would, yes. Um, I, I think that Anthony Albanese
has made a calculation about how to maximise his chances
of picking up all the seats he wants to, and
he's doing that by sidelining environmental issues and making controversial
calls on those issues. Salmon farming is a case in point.

(12:24):
The calculation he has made is that the voters he
annoys by doing that have nowhere else to go in
his mind except to the greens. And typically the greens
preferences will flow back to labor. Voters might just suck
up their disappointment and vote for labor anyway. Or thirdly,
if they choose to vote for one of the rising

(12:44):
number of independents, Albanese has done the numbers. And you
better believe he gets the abacus out before elections himself
and personally runs the numbers extremely carefully. And he's decided
that those independents, in the number of seats that he's
worried about won't affect Labor's chances of winning the election.
So essentially, he's saying we need to champion the blue
collar vote or the vote for people that are concerned

(13:07):
about the economy, because we don't want people worried about jobs,
cost of living and inflation and so on to be
put offside by our more environmentally minded reforms.

S1 (13:18):
Yeah. What about Plibersek and Albanese's relationship more generally? There's
been a lot of speculation about it. People have said
that she's been sidelined, that the environment portfolio was a
bit of a poisoned chalice to begin with. And then
last year we saw Albanese sort of basically scuttle a
key policy that Plibersek had been working on for quite
some time. Can you tell us about that, Mike?

S2 (13:39):
So that was the promise that labor made in 2022
to create a national environment watchdog known as the Environment
Protection Agency or the EPA. So they made an election promise.
Tanya Plibersek, it's fair to say, took three years to
get that reform into parliament, really, by all accounts, dragged

(14:01):
her heels a lot to get it in there almost
at the last minute before the election was set to
be called, she indicated that she had a deal with
the Greens to get the necessary votes to to create
the EPA in the Senate. And as we were talking
about before, Anthony Albanese was concerned about that being a
bad look to some voters in the upcoming election. So

(14:22):
labor siding with the Greens, um, to put more regulations
on industry. So he reached out across Tanya Plibersek, let's say,
and scuttled the deal with the Greens. It's correct to
say he went around Tanya Plibersek when doing that.

S1 (14:38):
Yep. Captain's call went over our head.

S6 (14:40):
David.

S8 (14:41):
Shouldn't you have told your minister, Tanya Plibersek this was
not going to happen before you told the Greens?

S6 (14:46):
We did.

S8 (14:47):
You told Tanya Plibersek before telling the Greens. We there
was no deal.

S6 (14:51):
We informed all of our ministers, were informed the whole
way through about how things were.

S1 (14:56):
We also saw this very sort of awkward looking interaction
between the two at the Labor Party campaign launch. It
was a sort of missed axis type situation, and a
little bit of fun was had with it. What did
you make of that, Mike? Was that was that a
media beat up, or was that a sort of accurate
reflection of how awkward and frosty their relationship is?

S2 (15:14):
It's one of those magic moments where the pictures, um,
really tell the the story that's going on behind the scenes.
It was that personal relationship and the visceral reaction they
had of the awkwardness of the whole situation, because Tanya
Plibersek and Anthony Albanese are stars of the New South
Wales Labor Party in the left wing faction, and they're

(15:34):
both rivals. You've got charismatic, photogenic Tanya Plibersek, who is
popular among Labor Party faithful, let alone the entire electorate.
Anthony Albanese has worked his way up and done the
hard yards to become leader, and he sees Plibersek as
as a rival to his leadership, even though they could
by all intents and purposes be allies and support each other.

(15:55):
But he's nervous about her leadership potential, so there was
a bit of that early pullback, nervous moment when they
went to meet each other in the middle of this
election campaign. And it came just a day or two
after Anthony Albanese had once again stomped all over Tanya
Plibersek turf without a mention of her. He was up
at the Great Barrier Reef in the middle of the

(16:15):
election campaign, highlighting Labor's great work on climate action and
reducing emissions to save the Great Barrier Reef. And his
factional ally, let's call it in ironic terms, Tanya Plibersek
was nowhere to be seen. Didn't get her mug on
the cameras and that's no mistake.

S1 (16:31):
Yeah, I love how even amongst all the artifice of politics,
the body language just doesn't lie in those moments. I
want to ask you both reflecting on the last three years.
It seems like, as we've discussed, Albanese has blocked some
or a few significant attempts at reform from Tanya Plibersek,
the environment ministers, and those reforms have been promised to voters.
So I just want to ask whether you think labor

(16:54):
has fulfilled its promises on the environment and whether it's
basically got a good report card on environmental issues. What
do you think, Mike?

S2 (17:04):
I think it's fair to say they haven't delivered on
their promises. So run through it really briefly. They guaranteed
in the 2022 election campaign that they'd create that EPA
that we were talking about. The national environment watchdog hasn't
been done. They also said that they would work on
reforming national environment laws, sort of indicating that they were

(17:24):
hoping to deliver that in Parliament, and there's no evidence
of what work they've done other than consult with industry
and become scared of the mining industry on that. And
there hasn't been much progress outside of that. On actual
environmental reform, we're.

S9 (17:40):
Talking not just about the creation of a new environment
protection agency, but a quite fundamental rewriting of our environment laws.
We want to see stronger environmental protections, but also faster,
clearer decision making. And that's the path we've embarked on.

S2 (17:57):
Well, to be fair, it has to be said that
Labour has done a lot of work on emissions reduction
and setting climate targets and getting in place reforms in
the energy grid to switch fossil fuels for renewables. And
there's conjecture over how much progress they're making, to be sure,
but they are making progress there. So it's a mixed

(18:19):
bag across that spectrum, in my opinion, but they haven't
delivered what they said they would. On environmental reform.

S3 (18:25):
Yeah, I mean, I'd say that they've done some pretty
solid work on reducing emissions. That's been a big factor
and a big focus of this first term. But I
think you'd have to say that, you know, Anthony Albanese
came to power promising to strengthen environmental laws and is
on the day before calling the election, he's actually significantly
reduced them or weakened them. Yeah.

S1 (18:47):
And what do you think is going to happen in
those Tasmanian seats?

S3 (18:49):
Guys, I think the electorates in Tasmania are interesting. I mean,
one electorate I didn't really speak about is Franklin, which
although it's on a pretty solid margin of 13.7% with
Julie Collins, the fisheries Minister. Um, we have an anti
salmon candidate who's solidly backed by the Greens. One of
the leaders of his campaign is Paul Thomas, who happens

(19:12):
to be married to Bob Brown. It's a well-resourced campaign
backed by $30,000 in climate, 200 money. They actually think
they're in with a bit of a shot in that seat,
but in Tasmania they have a pretty solid tradition of
voting below the line and numbering every single box. And
that's obviously influenced by the fact that they have a

(19:32):
hare-clark voting system in state elections. But they also do
it in the Senate. And, you know, who did you
put number 58in the Senate? You know, it's a bit
of a question. So I think, um, I think we
could see the possibility of more independence across the country.
And I think the green and the independent vote will
probably go up in Tasmania.

S2 (19:53):
How do you think it's going to shake out in
Braddon with with Macquarie Harbour in that seat?

S3 (19:58):
I think labor is going to get within striking distance
of Braddon. Wow. They internally and also people in the
Greens as well, think the 8%, uh, margin that the
liberals hold that seat on. And remember Gavin Pearce is
retiring is a bit of a freak result. They think
and I think their internal polling is showing. It's pretty close.

S1 (20:20):
There you go. The salmon industry will thank them if
they win. Braddon.

S3 (20:24):
Absolutely.

S1 (20:25):
Listen, guys, that was absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much.
I love doing these deep dives. And Tasmania is such
a fascinating electorate with so many sort of different issues
going on. Wonderful place to visit. I really appreciate you
guys joining me today.

S3 (20:38):
Thank you so much for having us.

S2 (20:39):
Thanks, jacki.

S1 (20:42):
Today's episode was produced by Julia Katzel with technical assistance
from Cormac Lally. Our executive producer is Tami Mills, and
Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. To listen to
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(21:05):
To support our journalism, subscribe to us via Visiting The
Age or smh.com.au. Subscribe. I'm Jacqueline Maley, thank you for listening.