Cassy O’Connor MP | Greens Leader
As the planet heats, countless species are being driven to extinction. Governments have a moral responsibility to protect intact habitat and build carbon stores, but that’s not reflected in this year’s State Budget.
While WA and Victoria are ending native forest logging – Jeremy Rockliff’s government continue to subsidise the mendicant industry. Not only that, they want to ramp up logging in to the future reserve forests, protected over a decade ago for their high conservation value.
Does Premier Rockliff want to be responsible for restarting the forest wars, and accelerating the extinction of species like the swift parrot, masked owl and Tasmanian devil?
There’s minimal funding put into protecting the outstanding universal values of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, just a dogged attachment to privatising our protected wild places.
In an escalating climate crisis and approaching El Nino summer, there’s a horrifying under-investment in bushfire mitigation and emergency service volunteers. For those who love wild lutruwita/Tasmania, it’s a frightening prospect.
At time when we need to be supporting businesses to rapidly decarbonise, the Liberals have also collapsed investment over the forward estimates into industry emissions reduction, creation of new renewable technologies, and green hydrogen.
Dr Rosalie Woodruff MP | Greens Environment spokesperson
As we’ve come to expect, the State Budget fails nature utterly. To the Liberals, it’s as though the climate and biodiversity crisis doesn’t exist.
The great environmental challenges facing lutruwita - the loss of biodiversity, and habitat pressures - are increased under the Liberals’ budget.
Environmental management resourcing is cut by nearly 80% across the Budget. Funding for a circular economy stops too, with nothing to help generate new industries.
The miniscule funding for threatened species recovery efforts ends for the orange-bellied and swift parrots - and nothing is listed to help recover the myriad other endangered species.
Environment Minister, Roger Jaensch seems content to monitor species towards extinction. Numbers plummet without mitigation, as protecting species conflicts with the Liberals’ political, anti-science native forest destruction plan.
The environment, along with housing and health services, are all victims in this Liberal ‘stadium or bust’ budget.