Rosalie Woodruff MP | Greens’ Environment spokesperson
The death of 1.38 million fish in Macquarie Harbour last summer confirms a catastrophic regulatory failure by the EPA and the State Government’s policy directives that govern its activities. This mass salmon death reveals the Liberals’ complete failure to protect the harbour’s marine environment and the threatened species and World Heritage values it contains.
It’s the Minister for the Environment, Elise Archer, who is responsible for setting the EPA’s policy directives to protect the marine environment, and she has failed to do that. The
community has lost confidence in the Minister’s capacity to regulate the salmon farming industry.
The Liberals in government have overseen dead zones, damage to World Heritage values, and close to zero dissolved oxygen levels in the harbour. It’s a marine ecosystem in crisis.
Minister Archer must reveal the impact of intensive fish farming on Macquarie Harbour’s threatened species and World Heritage values, so we know the full story.
So far, all we know is how many farm salmon died over summer, not the impact on the harbour’s environment.
Last summer, nearly 1.4 million salmon died in the toxic soup that is Macquarie Harbour. The Environment Minister must tell Tasmanians how she can possibly justify permitting industrial farming to continue in the severely degraded harbour.