“Our foundation has written inviting Tanya Plibersek to a helicopter view of takayna / Tarkine, as well as a walk into the heart of its cathedral-like rainforest area which will be destroyed if she approves MMG’s mining waste dump there,” Brown said in Hobart today.
Two years ago, the Morrison government’s Minister for the Environment, Sussan Ley, was escorted to the edge of the forest, but not into it, by MMG, the China-based owner of the Rosebery mine which is outside takayna. She refused to see campaigners for the rainforest except at a meeting, on her way out, near Burnie. The Federal Court then ruled that Ley had failed to properly abide by the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act’s precautionary principle in deciding MMG’s waste dump could proceed.
Ms Plibersek now has to decide whether to let MMG put the acid wastes in the rainforest or require it to use available alternatives for waste disposal outside takayna.
“I will be in the rainforest with our campaign manager Jenny Weber and other experts to greet her on Friday,” Brown said hopefully.