Comment

Alistair Allan
Murray Watt and the salmon industry

In 2022, soon after winning government after almost a decade in opposition, then environment minister Tanya Plibersek made a bold promise to the Australian public. It was a promise that had never been made before: there would be no new extinctions while the Albanese government was in power.

The announcement identified 20 priority places and 110 priority species on which the government would focus its efforts. As some conservation groups pointed out at the time, there are more than 1900 threatened species in Australia, but only 110 were chosen. They called those species the “winners”, while lamenting the long list of “losers”.

Fatefully, one animal that many Australians had never heard of made the priority list. It was the Maugean skate, now much better known, which resides in the tannin-stained waters of a wild and remote harbour on Tasmania’s west coast.

The Maugean skate – a type of ray – is estimated to have been on Earth for more than 60 million years. It is found in only one place on the planet, Macquarie Harbour, one third of which lies within the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. It has survived more changes and events than we can fathom but now it finds itself on the edge of extinction. One of the main reasons for this is that, over the past 38 of its 60 million years, industrial salmon farms have invaded the waters in which it lives.

In May 2023, the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies issued an emergency interim report stating that the population of the Maugean skate was crashing and urgent action was required to prevent its extinction. It cited human impacts as one of the main contributing factors to its decline, with salmon aquaculture listed.

Through May to July that year, three non-government organisations made a statutory request that the federal government reconsider the 2012 approval that allowed the expansion of fish farm operations in Macquarie Harbour, due to its significant impact on the Maugean skate.

Plibersek agreed that a reconsideration was warranted.

From that point, however, the unique and endangered Maugean skate quickly lost any chance of being a “winner”. Instead, the multinational industrial salmon industry set out to crush the skate’s future.

What followed revealed a government willing to do anything but uphold its promise of no new extinctions. Rather than heed the conservation advice from its own department, which stated that fish farms needed to be removed from Macquarie Harbour by the summer of 2023-24, the government opted for delaying tactics.

All of a sudden, Maugean skates were being captured and placed in tanks to create a breeding program. Two of the four captured skates died in captivity. The government hired equipment – from the very same fish farm companies that had caused the problem in the first place – to start pumping bubbles of oxygen into the harbour in a highly speculative and unproven trial. The fish farm companies hired their own scientists to try to disprove the emergency report, while giving tours to any politicians who were interested, Labor and Liberal. Many took the tours, but not one met with any of the environmental groups trying to save the skate.

Whenever Plibersek appeared to be trying to act for the Maugean skate, Anthony Albanese would ride over the top.

Propaganda started flowing thick and fast, with claims that Macquarie Harbour employed thousands of Tasmanians. A freedom of information document revealed that the brief to the environment minister suggested the number was just 21 in 2021. Articles by industry and supportive politicians came out dismissing the science and more.

As the months dragged on into years, a critical question arose. Under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the environment minister is required to decide on a reconsideration process “as soon as practicable”. When a species is on the edge of extinction, the need to act becomes crucial.

Yet it became apparent this was not the Albanese government’s intention. Instead, Albanese set out to condemn the Maugean skate to extinction, delaying the decision for almost two years until, finally and shockingly, his government changed Australia’s nature laws in late March to protect toxic industrial salmon farms rather than this ancient species found nowhere else on Earth. This was one of the Albanese government’s final acts before the election, a fact that should outrage us all.

The new parliament’s environment minister, Murray Watt, now had a new legal fig leaf to hide behind and the government was able to continue to ignore pleas from environment groups that it reconsider the 2012 decision on fish farms in Macquarie Harbour.

Bob Brown Foundation launched a Federal Court action to force the required decision from Watt, one way or another. Just days before this Federal Court challenge was due to be heard, Minister Watt acted with newfound speed to avoid the scrutiny of the court, and on Thursday he declared he could not revoke the 2012 approval of industrial fish farms in Macquarie Harbour.

In a fresh blow to Australia’s already weak system of protection, Watt’s decision relies on the pre-election changes to environment laws, which state that any project that has been active for five years, and has carried out its actions in a way that is “ongoing or recurring”, cannot be reconsidered for its environmental impacts by the government.

Simply put, under this law, once a project has been operating for five years, it becomes permanently exempt from future review – no matter what its environmental damage.

This means that from a local community group fighting to protect a river to mega projects such as the recently approved expansion of the North West Shelf gas project, the clock is officially ticking. Something like the approval of the North West Shelf gas project could become untouchable after five years. The same could apply to extensions of coalmines.

This is the path our environment minister has chosen. Despite the years of scientific advice from experts and the government’s own conservation recommendations, Watt has decided none of that can be considered. In other words, the government amended a law to suit its own agenda. It is the most cynical and outrageous course of action a government could take when faced with the pending extinction of an endagered species.

This is the perverse completion of Albanese’s broken promise on extinction. Not only has his government been prepared to condemn the Maugean skate, it has also shown the Australian public that, when faced with the choice between protecting nature and corporations, the corporations will always win.

Industries across Australia – the miners, the loggers, the fossil fuel industry – would have been overjoyed to see Albanese so willing to sacrifice an endangered animal on the altar of big business. The bold promise of no new extinctions lies in tatters.

Now, with this appalling decision made, Bob Brown Foundation will challenge the decision itself. We will argue that fish farming in Macquarie Harbour has in no way been “ongoing or recurring” and has been an ever-changing operation, which was described by the federal conservation advice in 2023 as having a “catastrophic” impact on the survival of the Maugean skate.

If we win, we will remove the new laws allowing salmon farming to continue in Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour, stripping the government of any excuse to not protect the Maugean skate, giving a lifeline to this endangered animal and setting a precedent for challenging this outrageous “ongoing or recurring” amendment.

We will not let the government drive the Maugean skate to extinction. Just as importantly, we will be fighting a law that has dire consequences for the environment and wildlife across Australia.

Whichever way the legal challenges go, the fight to save the Maugean skate will continue. The best thing we can all do to help this unique, ancient creature, which happens to call one harbour in Australia home, is to stop buying farmed salmon.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on August 16, 2025 as "The extinction of decency".

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