TRANSCRIPT

Subjects: National Commission against Corruption, Tasmanian Greens State Conference, Tarkine, supertrawler, environmental protection, Tony Abbott, Tasmanian Liberals State Conference

JOURNALIST: The anti-corruption watchdog you're pushing for, how much power would you like to see such a body have?

"The Tasmanian Government, in particular Minister Bryan Green, is sabotaging the Intergovernmental Agreement on Tasmania's forests by recklessly approving a mining lease over 362 hectares in the Meredith Range in the heart of the Tarkine," Australian Greens leader, Senator Christine Milne, said today.

"This is an area under active consideration for National and World Heritage listing, as part of the Intergovernmental Agreement process.

The Greens' 2012 Too Precious To Lose Campaign.

Christine Milne speaks on the Tarkine, the Budget, Rupert Murdoch and more

Australian Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown says today’s Tasmanian forests “conservation agreement” is a blueprint for the utter destruction of more than 20 square kilometres of high conservation value (HCV) forests.

“That’s 1000 Melbourne Cricket Grounds in area of World Heritage Value forests to be logged and firebombed by Forestry Tasmania in breach of the 2011 agreement,” Senator Brown said.

“Ceasing routine meetings with the Prime Minister over this dishonouring of her 2011 Intergovernmental Agreement is a weak gesture considering the gravity of the matter. 

The major Greens policies are supportive of Tasmania. For example, the Greens support will get the mining tax through -- and we'll be trying to make it much stronger -- which will redistribute some money from overseas shareholders to Australians including Tasmanians.

A more measured pace in extraction of our mineral resources would mean a lower exchange rate which would help Tasmanian tourism and lower interest rates that would benefit other Tasmanian industries.

Opening the Labor Party conference, Julia Gillard told her party faithful she wanted the ALP to be the party that says "yes to the future".

Yet the Prime Minister spent the next three days advocating for the resurrection of the old, tired conservative policies of John Howard. On policies covering asylum seekers, uranium and same-sex marriage, Labor's leader backed the stance of the former ultra-conservative Liberal prime minister.

Federal Environment Minister, Tony Burke, must explain why he will allow the assessment of mining proposals to occur in the Tarkine before acting on advice before him to permanently heritage list the region, Australian Greens Deputy Leader, Christine Milne said today.

"Minister Burke today claimed on ABC local radio to have no information leading to the emergency heritage listing of the Tarkine, but failed to mention a report buried in his department recommending the Tarkine be listed.

The re-lodgement of the Tarkine Road for federal approval gives Environment Minister, Tony Burke, an immediate reason to finally put the Tarkine wilderness on the National Heritage list, the Australian Greens said today.

The Tasmanian government's withdrawal of the Tarkine Road proposal, which would have a devastating impact on the last remaining disease-free Tasmanian devil population, was given by the Minister as the key reason previous emergency listing of the Tarkine was allowed to expire.