Environmentalist Bob Brown says the Albanese government’s minister for the environment, Murray Watt, is feeding Australia’s environment to the wolves of mining, logging and land clearing.

“Fresh from authorising a 40 years extension of Woodside’s ‘carbon bomb’ Murujuga destruction in Western Australia, while ignoring ‘Save our Songlines’ activists there, Watt has now gathered top self-interested captains of industry to shape future environment laws. Environment groups who would draw the line at protecting what’s left of Australia’s wildlife habitats and climate stability will be left outside the tent while Watt’s wolves of industry get what they want inside,” said Bob Brown.

“What Watt doesn’t get when he rubbishes strong environmental advocates as ‘stone throwers’ is that the majority of Australians, in particular young Australians, want much stronger, not much weaker, environmental protection of their wildlife, forests, coral reefs and lifestyles. When Watt says his ‘train is leaving the station’ in formulating new laws he means abandoning the green station to go down the track of more coal mines, gas fracking, clearfall logging and coral bleaching: that is, environmental death to suit Albanese Labor’s corporate backers.”

“While Watt sells out the environment, peaceful protesters are being arrested, almost daily, in Tasmania’s wildlife-filled forests, doing the job he should be doing.”

“In appointing Watt, Albanese has expunged former minister Tanya Plibersek’s concerns that ‘the precious places, landscapes, animals and plants that we think of when we think of home, may not be here for our kids and grandkids’, that ‘Australia is one of the world’s deforestation hot spots’ and that global warming ‘heats our oceans … destroys habitats … worsens extreme weather events … those bushfires were an ecological bomb … if we don’t act those awful red nights will become more common’.”

“Watt won’t act.”

“One sure outcome of Watt’s process, set up to fail Australia’s environment, is that a much more active and popular environment movement will emerge in this country. The environmental indices are getting rapidly worse as the popular support for action grows, and while Albanese, Watt and the big end of town will greenwash and vilify action-taking environmentalists, including Bob Brown Foundation, that popular support is growing every day,” said Bob Brown.