Media release – Bob Brown Foundation, 8 January 2022
Minister Ley chooses permit over prosecution for Chinese state-owned mining giant
Late this afternoon Minister for the Environment Sussan Ley has permitted Chinese state owned miner MMG’s plans to construct roading drilling and preliminary excavations at its proposed tailings dam in the southern reaches of takayna/Tarkine. The works entail 14km of six metre wide roading and 170 drilling and test pitting sites each requiring cleared areas of up to 25 x 25m.
MMG was forced to cease these same works in July after Bob Brown Foundation foreshadowed legal action over MMG’s commencement of works without approval. 71 people were arrested preventing MMG’s illegal activity. Earlier this week BBF uncovered and reported that some works had proceeded without permits, and yesterday MMG attempted to move a crane onto the site.
“Minister Ley has decided that rogue mining companies should be gifted with permits rather than prosecutions,” said Bob Brown Foundation takayna/Tarkine Campaigner Scott Jordan.
“She has placed the whims of a company owned by a foreign state over the verified National and World Heritage values of Australia’s takayna/Tarkine. And has done so without even requiring an assessment
We know where the Minister stands. It now falls to citizens to again take to the barricades to defend the rainforests, the eagles, the owls, the quolls and the devils that call this region home. We urge people to rally now to join us on the blockade to defend this ancient and majestic wild place,” said Mr Jordan.
The area to be affected has been verified as habitat for endangered species including the wedge-tailed eagle, masked owl, spotted tailed quoll and Tasmanian devil.
Bob Brown Foundation re-established its blockade of the access road to the site on Sunday.
Decision here:
Media release – Tasmanian Greens
Libs use takayna as political football again
Environment Minister Sussan Ley is sacrificing threatened species habitat and aggravating an environmental battle to maintain votes in one of the nation’s most marginal Liberal seats, the Greens say.
Foreign-owned mining company MMG was today given the all-clear to recommence drilling and roading for a new toxic tailings dam in takayna/tarkine without having the works assessed under EPBC laws. The decision comes despite MMG commencing the works illegally.
Quotes attributable to Greens Senator for Tasmania, Peter Whish-Wilson:
“Despite a litany of failures on MMG’s behalf resulting in the blatant violation of our federal environmental laws, the Government is determined to inflame this long-standing environmental battle in takayna/Tarkine for its own self-interest.
“If our so-called Environment Minister was doing her job properly then MMG would have been prosecuted for breaching federal environmental law when it commenced works in threatened species habitat illegally.
“Instead, Minister Ley is more interested in using the environment as a political football than actually looking after it.”
Quotes attributable to Greens candidate for Braddon, Dr Darren Briggs:
“If Sussan Ley thinks that sacrificing our threatened species habitat and aggravating an environmental battle to maintain votes is going to win the hearts of Braddon then she’s clearly not been paying attention to what’s happening on the ground down here in Tassie.
“The people of Braddon are increasingly aware of takayna/Tarkine’s significance, and the Government’s short-sighted treatment of it.
“As a doctor I urge the Government to think bigger about the need to protect takayna/Tarkine – if not solely for environmental and climate reasons then for the subsequent health benefits that result from protecting its carbon rich forests.
“The Greens are ready to work alongside the community to protect takayna/Tarkine from any profit-hungry destruction MMG thinks it might be able to get away with under the watch of this reckless Government.”
Rachel Waters
January 9, 2022 at 22:17
Isn’t the Minister for the Environment supposed to protect the environment, and not sell it to China?
Why is this person in this role?
Ben Marshall
January 10, 2022 at 16:15
Why is Ley in the job?
For one, they were running out of Ministers not yet charged with actual crimes, but really, Ley is interchangeable with any of her colleagues who all share what appears to be a visceral hatred of the environment – if we’re to judge by their actions rather than their words.
It’s hard not to wonder why the hard / far-Right are so doggedly anti-environment, and why it loathes anyone who voices environmental concerns – even within their own parties and cultural demographics.
For the politicians the answer is simple – they seek advantage wherever they find it, and by fighting regulations which protect the environment they benefit the corporate mining sector and farmers, especially the Big Ag end of the farming community. Corporations see regulation of any sort as an obstacle to greater profits, so they’ll always fund politicians like Ley who tirelessly dismantle regulations and use their power to benefit their donors.
The Right-leaning rural and farming communities are easily persuaded that their preferred party, who look like them (white and older) are fighting environmentalists who often don’t look like them (diverse) because of shared values. The mantra of ‘jobs and growth’ implies an either/or argument – we can have a healthy environment or we can have a healthy economy. Self-interest dictates that already poorer and marginalised rural voters will choose the latter option.
Ley, and her colleagues at the Federal and State levels, leverage all of this to hold power. She’s as anti-science, anti-environment, amoral and (legally) corrupt as any member of the current Coalition, so really, she’s perfect for the role.
Thinker
January 14, 2022 at 15:42
Very perceptive, Ben.
Investigating a bit deeper however, we find that the political corruption of which you speak is rooted in the love of money where the wealthy are happily ensconced in gross materialism by their extremely deep and reckless addiction to it.
A damaged or ruined environment is simply “collateral damage” to the mega-rich and the giga-rich, and so are the profoundly damaging and often deadly consequences to humanity. Their aim is “to exploit to destruction” while they can, and to make as much gain as they can get away with before the inevitable “later” arrives. But “later” has already begun, and even the planet itself is now groaning, and in its own way it is rebelling accordingly.
It’s increasingly obvious that the minds of the wickedly selfish are conscience-free zones, however there will be no remedy in this country because Australians are doers, not thinkers. Their minds have been so cunningly and deeply opiated with mesmerising trivia that they cannot discern the difference between what’s important and what’s not, unable to acknowledge that the end result of this journey into madness will be extinction, and, to the perceptive, we are well on the road to that.
It’s of major importance to the wealthy in general, and those controlling this country from elsewhere through their traitorous Liberal party puppets, to keep things this way so that that our workforce will further become, and remain, deceived, docile, ignorant, powerless and perennially zombified. Democracy does not exist when it’s zombies who go off to vote.
In Australia, and particularly in the USA, getting secretive control of the levers of government is crucial to the wealthy.
Millions of our honest workers pay taxes extracted from their pay packets before they ever see the remainder, but business pays none. The funds that it secures to maintain the charade that businesses actually do pay taxes is extracted mostly from the sale of their goods and services to the taxpaying public, but at its roots it’s always the perennially taxed workers who pay for everything while business gleefully banks in its own name that which the workforce has earned. It’s all an updated version of the old ‘masters and slaves’ relationship, and it’s kept going by legislated threats of punishment for defiance.
Ministers and supporters of our Liberal governments are willing tools for implementing this evil for what they can, each and collectively, get out of it for themselves.
It’s all cruel, relentless selfishness, no matter what damage is done.
john Hawkins
January 16, 2022 at 14:46
It is called wedge politics. Here in Tasmania the common good is of no importance.
The boys and girls are for hire, and it’s corporate donations that get them elected. Whatever it takes.
Do you think that they actually believe that it is in the interests of Tasmania to log its World Heritage Listed Native Forests?
Logger Barnett took the reintroduction of logging in the World Heritage Listed Tasmanian Great Western Tiers to UNESCO, but they politely told him and his Liberal acolytes to piss off. Barnett became a hero to the Tasmanian Logger – is that really something to be proud of?
The swinging seats in Tasmania need the logging and mining vote, so Baaaaaaarnett and the Gutwhiner sell their souls to the devil of corporate money, and the one armed bandit and mining companies are thereby enabled to buy power.
It is a simple as that.
Human beings are heading towards extinction as the climate change lobby and the Murdochs of this world add billions to their empires at the expense of us all.
Rupert, you cannot take it with you!
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Wedge politics (plural wedge politics)
(politics) A strategy or pattern of behavior by a politician, political party, or advocacy group which is intended to have a divisive effect on one’s political opponents or on the electorate, especially by emphasising an issue which polarizes opinion along racial, regional, or other demographic lines.
— Moderator