Media release – Bob Brown Foundation, 12 August 2025
Albanese and Watt to turn both barrels on Tasmania’s environment
“We will take them head on,” said Bob Brown today at a media conference.
PM Albanese’s Environment Minister Murray Watt is predicted by Bob Brown Foundation to turn both barrels on Tasmania’s environment and wildlife by backing two projects with devastating impacts on wildlife.
MMG Mining Dam
Albanese/Watt are predicted to decide for Chinese state-owned corporation MMG’s ‘preliminary’ works on a dam to store acid waste from its Rosebery mine in the ancient Takayna rainforest.
The to-be-destroyed rainforest, at McKimmie Creek, is prime habitat for the Tasmanian Masked Owl and Azure Kingfisher. A much bigger dam, being built outside Takayna by the nearby Bluestone Mines’ Renison tin mine, could take all of MMG’s waste and save the Takayna rainforest.
More than 80 forest defenders have been arrested in the past, blockading MMG’s bulldozers from this same rainforest. The environment minister, while meeting multiple corporate CEOs, says he doesn’t have time in the coming months to meet Bob Brown Foundation.
Robins Island Wind Turbines and Transmission Lines
Albanese/Watt are likely to back a wind power project threatening one of the world’s richest birdlife sites at Robbins Island in northwest Tasmania. This project is for ACEN, a company owned in the Philippines, and follows the approval of the $5 billion Marinus cable across Bass Strait. Robbins Island hosts a huge population of migratory birds, some of which fly to Siberia and Alaska and are amongst the most threatened species on Earth.
Besides transmission lines smashing rainforest, the Robbins Island project includes a vast concrete causeway, 100 turbines with blades spinning more than twice as high as Hobart’s Wrest Point Casino tower in the middle of flightpaths, including those of the critically-endangered Orange-bellied Parrot and Tasmania’s giant Wedge-tailed Eagle.
ACEN’s project would expose the only remaining naturally safe population of Tasmanian Devils to facial tumour disease.
Watt recently gave the go-ahead for Woodside to expand and pollute the world’s greatest rock art site in WA.
Earlier this year, Albanese legislated to back industrial salmon farm pollution threatening the ancient Maugean skate in Macquarie Harbour.
The rapidly-growing BBF says it will take these projects head-on in defence of Tasmania’s wild and scenic environment and wildlife abandoned by the Albanese government.
“Besides subsidising the slaughter of Tasmania’s native forests and wildlife, backing these destructive but unnecessary projects in Tasmania means Albanese and Watt will bring on the biggest public confrontation with environmental defenders here since the Franklin dam,” BBF founder and patron Brown said today.
“It is tragic that the prime minister has deliberately appointed a corporate lackey as environment supremo.
So be it.
Backed by public opinion, we will take them on in the defence of the many heirloom creatures that they are pushing towards extinction,” said Brown.
Images courtesy BBF supplied video
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