Thursday, 20 February 2025

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:23): (1452) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Environment and concerns a disturbing new development in the lawfare campaigns waged by environmental activist groups against state agencies. I have spoken here in the past about the dodgy nexus of professional activists, charities and academics. These grifters form a symbiotic coalition which exploits the mass of no doubt genuine, well-meaning and largely uncritical environmentally minded members of the public. Campaigns are run, funds raised, activists employed and academics financed to produce helpful – that is, deeply slanted and biased – research. Legal cases are taken against the state based on this work, which in turn raise publicity and then become the foundation of further fundraising. The whole vicious cycle engulfs and destroys legitimate industry.

We saw this with forestry. VicForests were completely unable to perform their lawful business. At one point, shockingly, the minister told VicForests to stop legal action to recover $2 million in taxpayer funds owed by anti-logging group MyEnvironment, and the consequence of this was that the activists won: native timber harvesting was banned and VicForests has been disbanded. The whole activist industry notched up a victory, despite the fact that the net result of this ban will be more environmental damage, not less – not to mention the devastating economic loss.

Tonight, however, I want to highlight a new danger. The native timber ban and the pulping of VicForests is not the end of the story. This week in the Federal Court Justice Horan largely ruled against an application by Warburton Environment seeking to further restrict the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action’s ability to conduct planned burns in Victorian forests. Planned burns are the new target; already the campaign is in motion. Facebook sites are raising money for the continuation of the court case, and Australian National University academic Professor David Lindenmayer has produced research saying prescribed burning can make bushfires worse. The Victorian Forest Alliance’s Facebook page has swung into action, picturing the ‘apocalyptic scene of a planned burn’ which allegedly shows ‘how dangerous and ineffective … planned burning regimes actually are’.

Professor Lindenmayer says:

We’ve understood for a long time now that logging can make bushfires worse, but it’s only in the last few years that evidence is showing that prescribed burning could be doing the same thing.

The action I seek from the minister is an assurance that she and her department will shut down this nonsense before it develops any further momentum. Victorians are already endangered by this government’s poor record of fuel load reduction. The creation of a new coalition launching lawfare efforts against it could be the final straw, and when deadly bushfires result lives could well be lost.