Our laws were in danger of doing what they were supposed to do - so they were changed

As chunks of rotting salmon from a massive fish die-off wash up on the shores of Tasmania's pristine beaches, the Albanese government rammed legislation to shield the salmon industry through Parliament within 48 hours, with the support of the Coalition.

Details of the legislation were made public on Monday. On Tuesday, it was introduced to and passed by the lower house. By Wednesday evening it was law. Forget policy on the run, this was slapdash.

While focus was on the government's surprise income tax cuts and Peter Dutton's plans to sack 41,000 public service workers, Australia's environment laws were gutted with no genuine debate. None of the regular parliamentary scrutiny that accompanies a bill.

No Senate inquiry. No time for public hearings or public input into the legislation. No consultation with scientists, or the local community.

It was pure politics. Both Labor and the Coalition rushed the legislation through with an eye on votes in Bass, Braddon and Lyons.

What's at stake? Only the extinction of a fish that has been around since the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Tasmania's Macquarie Harbour is the only place on Earth where the Maugean skate still lives. Scientists sounded the alarm that the skate was on the brink of extinction when the skate population declined rapidly, coinciding with the massive expansion of salmon farming in the harbour. One-third of Macquarie Harbour is World Heritage-listed, and the Maugean skate is recognised for its World Heritage Value because of its link to the dinosaurs.

Why the haste? Because our environmental laws were in danger of doing what they were supposed to do: protect endangered species.

When new science became available, showing that intensive salmon farming was having a significant impact on the skate by reducing oxygen levels in Macquarie Harbour, the Australia Institute, the Bob Brown Foundation and the Australian Marine Conservation Society wrote to federal Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek, urging her to reconsider the 2012 decision to allow fish farms to expand in Macquarie Harbour on the grounds that it is pushing the Maugean Skate to extinction.

Documents obtained under freedom of information revealed the federal government received advice that salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour should be comprehensively assessed under national environment law. And salmon farming operations in Macquarie Harbour would have to stop while such an assessment took place.

Let's be clear. This is not some kind of "flaw" in our environmental laws, as the government has been describing it this week. This was our environmental laws working as intended to protect and conserve our biodiversity.

For once, our nature law was about to do what it is supposed to do - protect endangered species. But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese put a stop to that.

The major parties couldn't change the science, so instead they changed the rules. As the Environmental Defenders Office described it, the new laws "restrict the Minister from remaking decisions in certain circumstances - even where doing so would prevent environmental pollution, destruction, or the likely extinction of a species".

It's a recipe for environmental disaster. And it applies well beyond salmon farming. It's a death warrant for the endangered Maugean skate, but it's also a potential threat to the koala, the mountain pygmy possum, the northern hairy-nosed wombat other endangered species.

Allowing for the review of decisions when new information and new science becomes available is not a design flaw, it's common sense. If a drug had been on the market for ten years and we suddenly discovered it might be killing people, we wouldn't leave it on the shelves because too much time had passed since it was first approved.

Decisions of the Environment Minister aren't written on stone tablets, like the Ten Commandments. They can and must be able to be reviewed when new science becomes available. We live in an age of a warming climate, where extreme weather events are causing mass bleaching events on both the east coast's Great Barrier Reef and the west coast's Ningaloo Reef. Where the Black Summer bushfires wiped out three billion animals within a period of a few months. Where native forest logging threatens koala habitat and fracking threatens our clean drinking water. Decisions can't be set and forget.

The fact is the federal government knows the salmon industry is damaging Macquarie Harbour. Rather than regulate it properly, it announced $30 million in funding to support "a sustainable aquaculture industry" and to improve and scale up oxygenation in Macquarie Harbour to "help offset the effects of human activities". You don't spend $30 million dollars when there's no problem to fix.

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And why should taxpayers be footing the bill to fix damage caused by companies that don't even pay tax? According to Australian Tax Office data, no company tax has been paid by Tasmanian salmon farms since 2019, despite selling over $4 billion worth of fish in that time.

The situation in Macquarie Harbour is a perfect example of why Australia needs stronger environmental laws, not to water down already inadequate protections. If the Labor government won't protect an endangered species threatened with extinction that lives in a World Heritage-listed harbour, then every endangered species in Australia is on the chopping block.

Labor renewed its vow to establish a federal environment protection agency if it wins the election. But will voters believe them? It's just a few weeks since they shelved their previous election promise to placate the gas industry in WA.

The fact is Labor won the last election promising to strengthen Australia's environmental laws, but the final act of the Albanese government was to weaken John Howard's environmental laws. It may win Labor some votes in Tasmania, but it comes at a steep cost to their credibility with voters who care about nature.