Senator THORP (Tasmania) (15:16): I move: That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Employment (Senator Abetz) to a question without notice asked by Senator Thorp today relating to the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. Today Australians can be in no doubt that we cannot trust this government to look after our environment. Since it gained power, the Abbott government has systematically tried to dismantle Australia's strong environmental protections and attempted to open up Australia's precious World Heritage spaces to loggers and big polluters, but overnight in Doha, common sense has prevailed. The World Heritage Committee took just seven minutes to reach agreement that the Abbott government's attempt to delist 74,000 hectares of World Heritage forest in my home state of Tasmania should not proceed. The committee saw what was clear to anyone who had even a passing acquaintance with the facts: that the delisting was completely unjustified and, if approved, would have set a dangerous global precedent. Ironically, the very area in question is the very area the World Heritage Commission itself requested Australia to include in our World Heritage listings in 2007, 2008, 2010 and again in 2012. Really, the government were asking the World Heritage Committee to say that it was wrong when it repeatedly asked for the extensions in these years and wrong again when it supported the extension application in 2013. Not only that, but in preparing its submission for the excision, the government relied on exactly the same data that convinced the World Heritage Committee to list the area only a year ago. No extra information was sourced, no field trips were undertaken by the department, no further mapping was done and no experts were consulted. Instead, in its submission to the World Heritage Committee, the government simply jotted down a few words next to each of the 13 areas they wanted to excise. In fact, 10 of these areas only had the words 'contained logs/degraded areas' as the single justification for their excision. It is almost as though the government thought they did not need to provide any sort of evidence to support their claims—as if their very words alone would make it so. Well, it is not so. It seems the World Heritage Committee agrees; one member nation referred to the Abbott government's application as 'feeble'. And feeble is exactly what it is. Recently I chaired an inquiry into the delisting which found that the vast majority of the proposed excision area—unlike the comments from Senator Abetz earlier—is pristine, untouched wilderness. During hearings, expert witnesses described the government's claims to the contrary as 'incorrect', 'grossly overstated' and 'blatantly misleading if not downright dishonest'. Again and again, witnesses asserted that the vast majority of the 74,000 hectares is in no way degraded. Many attested that more than 90 per cent of the excision area has high conservation values and no evidence of logging. Tellingly, the Department of the Environment representatives agreed under questioning that only four per cent of the area could be described as heavily disturbed. Senator Colbeck: That is not true. Senator THORP: It is true. In fact, the 748-hectare area to be listed at Dove River near Cradle Mountain has been put forward to be excised despite the fact the environment department has determined the degree of disturbance to be precisely none. Of course, the World Heritage Committee last year found the area to be of outstanding universal environmental and cultural value. This is not surprising when you understand the area is habitat to iconic rare and endangered species such as the Tasmanian devil, the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle, the spotted-tail quoll, the grey goshawk and the myrtle elbow orchid. It also incorporates pristine tracts of old-growth tall eucalypt forests, rainforests, cave systems and moorlands that are simply too precious to lose. What made the excision request even more absurd was that it was supposed to deliver economic and social outcomes by invigorating the forest industry. Sadly, and perhaps even a little ironically, it is this government's cavalier excision plan that would have done more damage to the forest industry than they can possibly imagine. The inquiry heard again and again that this excision, if it were to go ahead, would threaten Tasmania's Forest Stewardship Council's certification, which would in turn threaten the viability of our timber industry. Thanks to this government, we are becoming rapidly known as having an aggressive anti-environment agenda which pays scant regard to the impacts on generations to come— (Time expired)