WEBVTT - Richard Flanagan on Labor's first extinction 0:00:01.400 --> 0:00:09.440 From Schwartz Media. I'm Ashlin McGee. This is seven am. 0:00:09.600 --> 0:00:11.880 If you've bought salmon for dinner, there's a pretty strong 0:00:11.960 --> 0:00:15.520 chance that came from Tasmania on the island state. Salmon's 0:00:15.560 --> 0:00:18.680 a billion dollar industry. And at mcquarie Harbor, where Booker 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:22.000 Prize winning author Richard Flanagan grew up, the waterline is 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:25.720 now dotted with these net pens and thrashing salmon. But 0:00:25.760 --> 0:00:28.680 the harbor is also home to a sixty million year 0:00:28.720 --> 0:00:31.319 old creature and it looks like it's about to be 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:33.440 wiped off the face of the earth under the watch 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:37.159 of the federal government. Today, writer and contributor to The 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:41.440 Monthly Richard Flanagan on how corporate greed, political inaction, and 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:44.720 our taste for salmon are all choking the Morghean skate. 0:00:47.000 --> 0:00:54.600 It's Monday, May twenty, Richard, Take me to mcquarie Harbor 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:57.480 on Tazzy's West coast. When did you first visit? And 0:00:57.840 --> 0:00:58.640 what's it like there? 0:00:59.240 --> 0:00:59.360 Oh? 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:02.160 There all my life. I actually grew up on the 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:06.720 west coast in a little mining town called Rosebery, and 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:12.520 it's a very large and remarkable inland waterway, about six 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:16.680 times the size of Sydney Harbor. It has this remarkable 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:21.760 human history and then it just feels a beautifully majestic 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:27.080 and wild sort of place. It's bounded by rainforest all around, 0:01:27.400 --> 0:01:30.400 but you also have flowing into it from the east 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:34.080 some of the most extraordinary wild rivers in the Southern Hemisphere, 0:01:34.200 --> 0:01:36.720 the Franklin and the Gordon Rivers. And in fact it's 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:39.480 so unique an extraordinary that a third of it is 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:43.639 actually designated as part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:47.880 And one of the reasons for that is because it 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:52.280 is the habitat of an extraordinary creature, the Morgan skate, 0:01:55.280 --> 0:01:58.680 which is part of the skate and rain shark family. 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:03.320 Million years old, so it goes back to the time 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:06.960 of the dinosaurs, and as far as we know, it 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:13.320 is now only found in Macquarie Harbor. So it's a 0:02:13.480 --> 0:02:17.440 very evocative place, and it is a place that Europeans 0:02:17.480 --> 0:02:21.240 have tried to impose themselves on again and again, first 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:24.240 with their penal systems, then with their minds. Are now 0:02:24.280 --> 0:02:27.440 in the slatest manifestation with their salmon farms. 0:02:27.840 --> 0:02:30.000 And so with the salmon farms there, what's it look 0:02:30.120 --> 0:02:30.919 like now. 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:34.040 Well, the Mcquarie Harbor salmon farms account for about ten 0:02:34.080 --> 0:02:39.280 percent of Tasmanian's salmon production. More or less, salmon farming 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:43.360 has been happening in Tasmania since the mid eighties, but 0:02:43.440 --> 0:02:48.120 it really only scaled up in the last twenty years. 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:56.160 And since that expansion started, we have seen a catastrophical 0:02:57.080 --> 0:03:03.079 environmental collapse. In Macquarie Harbor. Salmon farming is the very 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:06.840 worst form of factory farming. What you get are these 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:13.640 floating feed lots, sort of slightly ominous, fortified plastic pipe 0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:20.400 and nylon netted structures that increasingly have a warlike feel 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:23.880 with them. And that's necessary because they're actually waging a 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:27.160 strange sort of war with the natural world in order 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:30.520 that they can continue to grow the amount of salmon 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:34.520 that they do. People always notice when a salmon farm 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:38.120 arrives near them, how everything changes. The water starts to 0:03:38.160 --> 0:03:42.400 go murky, the smell of the sea changes. You start 0:03:42.480 --> 0:03:46.200 to get slicks and brown froth on the water. It 0:03:46.280 --> 0:03:48.920 got so bad in Macquarie Harbor. I've talked to people 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:52.400 who work on the farms there. There would be methane 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:56.440 bulls erupting at certain times the year from these meater, 0:03:56.640 --> 0:04:00.760 thick mats of waste at the bottom the sea floor, 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:05.840 methane balls the size of soccer balls erupting on the 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:11.320 surface from the rotting shit underneath. So it creates what 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:15.280 is up close a fairly unpleasant environment. And what we 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:19.760 can't see is the way the water underneath has almost 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:23.120 no oxygen in it, and it's hypoxic, and on the 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:26.800 sea floor sometimes what they call anoxic, that is, it 0:04:26.839 --> 0:04:32.320 has no oxygen whatsoever. Both those conditions are fatal we 0:04:32.400 --> 0:04:34.000 now know to the Morgan skate. 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:37.120 So it sounds like a really critical point we're at 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:40.440 for this skate. How have scientists told you they're feeling 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:42.120 about its chances of survival? 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:46.760 I think that best very frightened, and the worst despairing. 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:53.240 Leonardo Guider, a scientist with the Marine Conservation Society, describes 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:59.479 their fate as swimming around in a vortex of swirling shit, 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:01.800 trying to breed through a straw. 0:05:02.200 --> 0:05:05.120 Salmon farming, the fish production and the fish waste and 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:09.200 fish feed choose up what little oxygen is naturally in 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:10.880 the harbor, so the harbor is naturally loyal. 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:15.200 They can't breed in that sort of environment. They lay 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:18.039 their eggs in the sediment, and it's now believed the 0:05:18.080 --> 0:05:21.920 eggs can't survive in the sediment when there's no oxygen, 0:05:22.360 --> 0:05:27.000 and the population has collapsed, according to a report issued 0:05:27.080 --> 0:05:30.840 last year, by forty seven percent. They're now under a 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:34.480 thousand of these creatures left. The fear is that the 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:36.719 creatures that are left, many of them may be past 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:39.880 breeding age or incapable of actually reproducing. 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:43.600 And we are one extreme weather events away from an extinction, 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:47.679 and with our Nino bearing down on us possible storms 0:05:47.680 --> 0:05:51.120 on the front, we really need to make sure the 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:54.000 harbor is as resilient as possible so that it can 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:57.360 get the oxygen levels back up. And a key component 0:05:57.400 --> 0:05:59.440 of that, in fact, the primary threat to that is 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:01.360 intensive and aquaculture within the harbor. 0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:04.839 When the industry began flagging that it wished to expand 0:06:04.920 --> 0:06:09.240 in twenty eleven, scientists warned the federal government, who had 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:13.640 responsibilities under the EPBC Act to protect the World Heritage 0:06:13.680 --> 0:06:18.839 Area of Waters and to protect the Morganscape. It warned 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:24.800 the Tasmanian government. Environmentalists issued similar public warnings, and not 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:28.360 only that the leading salmon farmer and mcquarie Harbor at 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:31.800 that time, who was a small scale arsenal salmon farmer 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:36.839 Ron Morrison. He warned that if the expansion went ahead, 0:06:37.480 --> 0:06:41.640 the marine ecosystem Mcquarie Harbor would collapse within several years. 0:06:42.400 --> 0:06:47.760 In the Federal Environment Department's own report to Tanua Plibashek 0:06:47.839 --> 0:06:52.160 last September, it was made very very clear that the 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:59.039 primary cause of this extinction was salmon farming. And what 0:06:59.160 --> 0:07:04.240 I find really extraordinary about this whole story is that 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:08.200 this creature that survived sixty million years looks like it 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:12.840 won't be able to survive one decade of three tax 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:19.240 evading foreign owned multinational companies, greed and the cowdice of 0:07:19.320 --> 0:07:23.080 politicians who, rather than to act to regulate them and 0:07:23.160 --> 0:07:27.400 clean this industry up, have allowed them to destroy to 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:29.200 the point of extinction. 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:35.360 After the break, meet the big fish in Macquarie Harbor's 0:07:35.400 --> 0:08:00.040 little pond, Richard So, who owns the salmon far a 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:02.160 lots in Macquarie Harbor And what do we know about 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:02.920 those companies? 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:06.960 Those companies are interesting. There's three there's only three companies 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:12.840 that produce all of Australia's salmon. The smallest is Petuna, 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:17.080 which is owned by the New Zealand company Sea Lord. 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:22.320 Which is half owned by an ex Japanese whaling company 0:08:22.360 --> 0:08:23.720 called Massui. 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:29.680 Petuna, unique and personalized, a culture that evolved from one 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:34.320 Tasmanian family's intense desire to strive harder, to push further, 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:37.760 to grow, and to lead as the world market sought 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:40.800 improved food products in greater sustainability. 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:45.440 The next biggest is human aquaculture that's owned by one 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:50.680 of the most monstrous corporations in the world, JBS. 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:56.520 For Tasmania's human aquaculture, one of the world's premium salmon producers. 0:08:57.040 --> 0:09:00.400 A new era in sustainable salmon farming is the way. 0:09:01.320 --> 0:09:05.160 JVS are a Brazilian family owned company who have the 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:09.960 Juvius honor of being responsible for the biggest corruption scandal 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:10.840 in world history. 0:09:11.240 --> 0:09:14.120 Brazilians were shocked when President Michelle Tamer was caught on 0:09:14.200 --> 0:09:17.560 tape apparently endorsing the payment of hush money to obstruct 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:19.080 a major corruption prob. 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:22.840 In twenty seventeen, the two brothers who owned it went 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:28.560 to jail for bribing over eighteen hundred politicians and public figures. 0:09:28.640 --> 0:09:31.720 They even made a five hundred million dollar profit on 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:35.160 their own lead testimony by buying and selling dollars right 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:38.400 before and after the story broke, knowing the Brazilian currency 0:09:38.400 --> 0:09:39.239 would plunge. 0:09:40.000 --> 0:09:44.160 And today here on aquaculture is run out of Hobar 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:48.640 by none other than Wesley Patista's son, Enrique Batista. There 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:51.600 was the Australian Financial Review that dubbed him the Kendall 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:56.400 roy of salmon farming. There was a secret donor's dinner 0:09:56.760 --> 0:09:59.960 with the Tasmanian Liberal Premier at which it was set 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:03.800 some of the Batista family were present, and it was 0:10:03.840 --> 0:10:07.480 alleged they made demands of the premier. When he was 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:10.720 questioned about these allegations. 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:17.160 Of course, as all political parties do fundraiseres that's a 0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:20.360 matter for the Liberal Party organization. 0:10:20.679 --> 0:10:22.240 He refused to answer the question. 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:24.560 And so tell me about the third company. 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:29.120 The third company, Tassa, is owned by a company called 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:33.840 Cook Aquaculture that was so bad and some environmental records 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:37.680 so bad that it was thrown out of Washington State. 0:10:37.840 --> 0:10:41.000 Now punk fish farming will no longer be allowed in 0:10:41.080 --> 0:10:44.800 our state today, Commissioner. According to the Public Commissioner of 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:49.680 Lands there, Hillary Frans, there some farming practices had put 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:53.840 the entire marine ecosystem of Washington State in peril. 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:58.840 Today we are truly freeing Washington States owned aquatic lands 0:10:59.080 --> 0:11:02.480 from Enclos to CAGs, so. 0:11:02.480 --> 0:11:04.760 The other companies, I mean, it's a gallery of rogues, 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:09.200 to say the least. At the beginning of this year, 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:13.319 we had Anthony Alberesi fly into Tasmania for one purpose 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:16.960 only and that was to appear at a Tassau plant 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:21.800 with a Tassau baseball cap on embroidered with his nickname 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:24.680 on one side and salmon Tasmania on the other. 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:30.920 Of Australia, Salmon comes from Tasmania and it's a major 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:37.640 export industry. Some might argue it's Tasmania's second major export industry, 0:11:37.720 --> 0:11:40.959 only behind the export of Queen's as we've seen. 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:45.640 But what Anthony Alberzi was there for was to reassure 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:49.439 the industry essentially that nothing really was going to happen 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:50.640 about Macquarie Harbor. 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:56.240 My government supports jobs, we support regional economic development, and 0:11:56.280 --> 0:12:00.840 we support sustainability and this industry has a vital role 0:12:00.960 --> 0:12:01.560 to playing. 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:06.800 And he said jobs and the environment can coexist, and 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:09.440 he quoted this number that there were five thousand jobs 0:12:09.440 --> 0:12:12.480 in the industry and even more indirectly, this. 0:12:12.559 --> 0:12:16.599 Is an industry that produces some five thousand jobs, but 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:19.360 many more jobs than that indirectly as well. 0:12:20.160 --> 0:12:25.160 The real number, according to the Tasmanian government's own salmon 0:12:25.200 --> 0:12:28.920 report in twenty twenty one, is one seven hundred and 0:12:28.920 --> 0:12:31.840 thirty four jobs. That is as reported to the government 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:37.880 by the industry, the industry, labor, politicians, Antony Albanezi, Peter Darton, 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:41.040 all these people have come out and said that there 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:44.240 are hundreds of jobs at stake with Macquarie Harbor were 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:48.120 salmon farming to be stopped there the figures according to 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:52.680 the Tasmanian governments owned statistics, there are less than eighty 0:12:52.720 --> 0:12:56.160 one workers on the west coast of Tasmania. Then those 0:12:56.280 --> 0:12:59.680 jobs are important, and they are particularly important in struggling 0:12:59.679 --> 0:13:03.120 little communities. But I do not think it is beyond 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:08.640 a nation to find other equally good work for less 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:13.760 than eighty one people for something of this consequence, particularly 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:16.800 when we know too that these waters are warming rapidly, 0:13:17.320 --> 0:13:21.200 that salmon can't survive in warmer waters, and that the 0:13:21.360 --> 0:13:26.000 industry will inevitably shut down and more Quarie Harbor within 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:26.920 ten years. 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:33.720 So it begs the question why politicians at state level 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:37.600 at federal level continue to support the salmon industry. 0:13:37.640 --> 0:13:38.520 Why do you think it is. 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:42.760 We have to reflect on that and wonder, and we 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:47.080 should be very concerned about that. It speaks to a 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:51.200 mentality amongst the political class that has completely lost the 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:54.720 sense of what its role is, and that believe its 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:59.680 only role is to enable corporations to do their business. 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:05.560 Think the public good is identical to corporate profit. I 0:14:05.600 --> 0:14:10.000 think the other question this begs and I thought about 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:13.360 this a lot. We wonder why we have all these 0:14:13.400 --> 0:14:16.559 problems with climate and it's very easy to think it's 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:19.880 a few bad people, that it's this wicked politician, this 0:14:20.040 --> 0:14:25.440 terrible corporation. But ultimately why this is happening in Tasmania, 0:14:25.520 --> 0:14:29.600 it's because not enough people care and very few people act. 0:14:30.600 --> 0:14:33.000 You know, everyone listening to this can have an effect. 0:14:33.320 --> 0:14:36.640 Don't buy salmon, because every time you buy salm, you 0:14:37.240 --> 0:14:43.320 are helping drive this extraordinary creature to extinction. I think 0:14:43.960 --> 0:14:45.960 so much of what's wrong in the world happens not 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:48.520 because of the bad people, but because the good people 0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:52.040 think they can do nothing. The good people can always 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:57.880 do things. At the end of last year, where I 0:14:57.920 --> 0:15:02.000 went with some of the groups working to try and 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:06.640 reform the salmon industry, and they met with leading Woolworth's executives, 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:09.800 who have a great power to tell the industry it 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:13.120 should clean up. And there'd been some meetings a few 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:16.880 years before, and this meeting was completely different in tone 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:22.720 because we realized very quickly that they had no arguments 0:15:22.760 --> 0:15:26.640 they could make that they knew the industry was rotten 0:15:26.680 --> 0:15:30.000 to the core, but we also knew that they were 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:32.400 never going to do anything about it. Although they had 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:37.320 titles like had to sustainability and words like ethics and 0:15:37.400 --> 0:15:40.120 so on. They could have agreed as a block to 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:43.000 go back to their board and say it's rotten to 0:15:43.040 --> 0:15:46.360 the core and we can act to change it. But 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:50.600 they won't do that. They'll never do that unless everyone 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:55.160 in their different positions takes some responsibility and all of 0:15:55.240 --> 0:15:59.320 us can do things. Change has to come from within us, 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:01.600 and first we have to change ourselves. 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:05.040 Richard, thanks so much of your time today. 0:16:05.640 --> 0:16:06.000 Thank you. 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:18.560 Also in the news today, a group of pro Palestinian 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:21.480 protesters attempted to force their way to the floor of 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:25.360 the Labor Party's Victorian State conference on Saturday, with the 0:16:25.360 --> 0:16:29.120 doors of the conference room having to be barricaded. Premier 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:32.760 to Cinerell and accused the protesters of bringing violence, homophobia 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:37.160 and anti Semitism to the front door. Later on Saturday afternoon, 0:16:37.320 --> 0:16:41.040 Victorian Labors rank and file members carried six non binding 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:44.120 motions calling for an end to the Israel Hamas War 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:48.560 and Australian captain Zam Kerr's club Chelsea has won its 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:52.240 fifth straight English Premiership title, with an injured Kerr joining 0:16:52.240 --> 0:16:55.240 her teammates on the pitch to celebrate. Kerr had been 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:57.720 set to appear in court on Monday for a preliminary 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:02.800 hearing over charges she alleged caused racially aggravated harassment, alarm 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:05.640 or distress to a police officer, but the case will 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:07.720 now take longer, with the judge of setting a child 0:17:07.760 --> 0:17:11.240 ad for February next year. Her legal team intends to 0:17:11.359 --> 0:17:15.600 argue an abusive process by Crown prosecutors. That's all from 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:18.120 the seven Am team today. Thanks for your company. We'll 0:17:18.119 --> 0:17:19.560 see you again tomorrow.