Tasmanian Labor elders Paul Lennon and Dick Adams warn Anthony Albanese: Back salmon workers or repeat Mark Latham, Bill Shorten mistakes
Paul Lennon and Dick Adams have warned Anthony Albanese to ‘act with conviction’ and put salmon workers ahead of chasing votes in soft green seats.
Tasmanian Labor elders Paul Lennon and Dick Adams – who famously sided with John Howard in shielding forestry jobs at the 2004 election – have warned Anthony Albanese to “act with conviction” and put salmon workers ahead of chasing votes in soft green seats.
Swinging in behind Tasmania’s $1.36bn salmon industry and more than 5100 fisheries workers, Mr Lennon urged the government against repeating the election-losing mistakes of Mark Latham and Bill Shorten who alienated the forestry and mining sectors in 2004 and 2019.
The intervention by the Tasmanian ALP statesmen comes amid rising community fears over two reviews into the endangered Maugean skate, triggered by environmental activists and overseen by Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek, which threaten salmon fisheries in Macquarie Harbour.
The Prime Minister and senior government figures are working to overcome legal hurdles and provide certainty for salmon workers ahead of next year’s election in a bid to avoid voter backlash in the key Tasmanian seats of Braddon, Lyons and Bass. Mr Lennon, who was Tasmanian premier between 2004 and 2008, said if you “take the salmon industry out of the West Coast … you’ll pretty much destroy that economy”. “I fear we could be heading back into a period like 2004, where Tasmanian jobs become a political football in a federal election environment, where the major parties are chasing votes in soft green electorates in NSW and Victoria … where these jobs don’t matter,” Mr Lennon said.
“It’s very disappointing for me to see this all again. It’s history repeating itself.”
Invoking Bob Brown’s 2019 anti-Adani convoy in central Queensland, Mr Lennon said “people in the Labor Party nationally should reflect on that because many people would argue strongly that’s what cost Bill Shorten the election”.
“Labor was trying to play both sides of the fence on the Adani mine. I think you’ve got to act with conviction when these issues come up … it is almost black and white these days, you’re either for or against. You can’t be halfway, because then it becomes a death by a thousand cuts,” he said.
Mr Adams, who held the central Tasmanian seat of Lyons between 1993 and 2013, said the Albanese government “has to think for the long-term and not a short-term gain”. “It should learn that it can’t make decisions that are just about one group based on one narrow argument,” Mr Adams said.
“(Tasmanian voters) care about their industries. They know that their jobs and the economic activity gives them benefits. To try to close down industries … people generally in Tasmania see that most of the argument is a political argument to try to benefit some individuals.
“People are a bit smarter than that. They know that there’s issues that are now being pulled together for political purposes.” Reflecting on the 2004 election campaign, in which he spoke at the same Launceston rally alongside Mr Howard and CFMEU officials, Mr Adams said “Latham blinked and Howard didn’t”.
Mr Adams said his view on Ms Plibersek’s drawn-out reviews was that the government had “made the decision to not make a decision” and warned delays were not in the “interest of the members that are trying to win the seats or fighting the political battle on behalf of their parties to be against salmon farms.”
After the Liberals fell-short in Lyons by 1344 votes in 2022, the Coalition is hoping to win the seat. Retiring government MP Brian Mitchell has been replaced with former Labor state leader Rebecca White, who along with state colleagues back the salmon industry.
Australian Workers Union national secretary Paul Farrow on Wednesday urged Mr Albanese to put the livelihoods of salmon workers ahead of “inner-city activists” and not leave “whole communities dangling”. Jim Chalmers, an AWU member, said the review decisions would be made “in the usual way by environment ministers weighing up all of the various considerations”.
Mr Lennon said it is “mind boggling for me that people actually think that a small number of salmon pens in Macquarie Harbour could be causing the environmental outcome that people are alleging”, given the harbour is six-times the size of Sydney Harbour.
“It’s a massive expanse of water and people are being asked to believe that the survival of a fish species, which can roam unfettered through that harbour, is now solely dependent on a few salmon pens. It’s ridiculous that we’ve got to this point where people’s livelihoods and jobs are under constant threat, with this sort of rubbish being peddled. If you’re talking about Macquarie Harbour, there’s been a large copper mine operating over there for well over 100 years, discharging waste into a river which then spills into Macquarie Harbour.
“Anybody who … has a look at the King River will be gobsmacked because it flows yellow. How someone could blame the salmon industry for the soft numbers of the Maugean skate and not mention … what impact, if any, the outflow of the King River might have. It astounds me.”
Mr Lennon warned that environmental activists have targeted the salmon industry to “reach out to Australians in the supermarket sector … the ultimate aim is for them to raise funds for campaigns in other areas”. “(The salmon industry) is well managed, contained and subject to strict environmental controls. Like everybody else, they should be subject to continuous improvement and if better environmental outcomes are justified then they should be made to adhere to them,” he said. “But the starting point shouldn’t be that they have to shutdown. And that’s where we’ve gotten to. They’ve been blamed for the depletion of numbers of a wild fishery and without any basis of fact.”
The Australia Institute, Bob Brown Foundation, Australian Marine Conservation Society and Environmental Defenders Office last year successfully asked Ms Plibersek to review 2012 approvals under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act for expanded Macquarie Harbour salmon operations.
Australia Institute Tasmania director Eloise Carr said “is anyone other than the AWU seriously suggesting we should not listen to science and not follow the law”.
“Democracy is about choices. We used to hunt whales, log the Daintree and mine asbestos and all those industries created some jobs,” the institute’s Tasmania director Eloise Carr said.
“There are lots of places where salmon can be grown but only one place in the world where the Maugean skate can live … if we chose a bit more salmon over the last of the dinosaur fish, then it speaks volumes about our priorities.”
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who has pledged to reverse adverse decisions impacting Tasmanian salmon workers, said there was “a huge fight” going on within Labor and a rift between Mr Albanese and Ms Plibersek.
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