Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson used a box of tissues labelled “real men cry” as he delivered an emotional farewell speech in the Senate on Wednesday night.
Whish-Wilson, who has represented Tasmania for 14 years, reflected on his career as a self-described “climate ocean campaigner” and took pointed aim at fossil fuel interests, political inaction on climate change and right-wing media.
He opened by calling for genuine action on reconciliation with First Nations people.
“I rarely hear the words truth and treaty spoken these days or closing the gap, for that matter,” Whish-Wilson said.
“We know what needs to be done, let’s get on and do it.”
The senator said a surfing session with his son Finn at Bicheno, his hometown, recently voted Australia’s number one small town by Traveller magazine, ultimately sealed his decision to leave politics.
“Getting back on the beach in the fading light, the ocean a perfect mirror of an intense magenta sunset, I remember putting my arm around Finn and said, this is as good as it gets for me,” he said.
“I reckon I’ve got at least 10 good years of surfing left in me, so I am going to make hay while the sun shines.”
Whish-Wilson spoke at length about environmental destruction along Tasmania’s east coast, including the disappearance of little penguins from Bicheno due to marine heatwaves linked to fossil fuels and the loss of 95% of Tasmania’s giant kelp forests.
He described watching penguin chicks “slowly starved to death” after their parents were forced too far out to sea to find food.
The senator attacked what he called a “death cult of powerful corporations and elites” blocking climate action, criticised the Murdoch press as a “misinformation machine” and labelled Donald Trump “the narcissist in chief.”
He also criticised Labor for “still approving new fossil fuel projects.”
Whish-Wilson listed legislative achievements including competition policy reforms, anti-money laundering laws, multinational tax transparency measures and the banking royal commission.
He became visibly emotional while paying tribute to Fraser Brindley, a Greens staffer who died while working in Parliament House three years ago.
“Please know your son is dearly missed and was loved and respected by so many of us,” he told Brindley’s mother Helen, who was in the chamber.
Whish-Wilson congratulated his successor, environmental lawyer Vanessa Bleyer, saying she would be “a formidable senator for the Greens, for Tasmania and for nature.”
He took over Tasmania’s Greens Senate seat from former party leader Bob Brown.
