Labor MP Shane Broad has told new Greens leader David Shoebridge to “go back to Sydney” after he criticised a tungsten project in the Tarkine.
In a Facebook video, Broad said Tasmania’s future “should be shaped by Tasmanians not the Sydney based new Greens leader”.
He said the “last thing” Tasmania needed was “a cashed-up lawyer from the leafy suburbs of Woollahra in Sydney” telling Tasmanians what to do with their resources.
“Coming down to Tasmania, stepping out into a bit of forest somewhere and telling Tasmania what we should do with our resources,” he said.
“That’s exactly what’s happened when we’ve had the new leader for the Greens come to Tasmania.”
Broad said Shoebridge had been “talking about how you have to stop all things that are happening in the Tarkine”.
“No mining, no forestry, no nothing,” he said.
“I think he should go back to Sydney and leave it at that.”
Broad said Tasmania needed “a balanced approach to protecting our environment while supporting the mining, forestry and industries that provide jobs and keep regional communities going”.
Shoebridge last week toured the north-west rainforest with the Bob Brown Foundation and said it was “obscene” that the state and federal governments were allowing the Mt Lindsay tin and tungsten project to “feed the US war machine”.
Shoebridge said last week the Tarkine was “a globally significant stretch of wilderness and nature” and the state and federal governments were “inviting in the exploration, the extraction of tungsten from the heart of the Tarkine”.
“They’re happy to destroy the rainforest to extract tungsten to feed into the US war machine,” he said.
“It is obscene that this has been allowed to happen.”
He said the Greens were “100% committed” to having the Tarkine added to the World Heritage List and “fundamentally say no” to the project.
“That is an obscene deal and we reject it,” he said.
ASX-listed Critica Limited holds a mining lease at Mt Lindsay, in the Meredith Range Regional Reserve and in September released a scoping study for a one million tonne-a-year underground mine, which it valued at around $1 billion.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Donald Trump signed a critical minerals framework in October last year to secure supply of minerals used in defence and advanced manufacturing.
Business, Industry and Resources Minister Felix Ellis also criticised Shoebridge’s comments last week, calling them “the same old fearmongering from the extreme Greens”.
“We back responsible mining, including at Mt Lindsay, subject to rigorous environmental and planning approvals,” Ellis said.
