Tasmanian Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson didn’t plan for a career in politics – according to him it just kind of happened.
He was born in Singapore, received his Masters in Economics from the University of Western Australia, before moving to Tasmania’s Tamar Valley with his family in 2005 where they operated a vineyard.
The proposed Gunns Pulp Mill at Bell Bay was right across the river – and the campaign was the catalyst that launched him into politics.
“I’d say that it’s true that I was an accidental politician, it’s not something I’d ever really wanted to do or saw myself doing,” Senator Whish-Wilson said.
“I’d moved my family down to Tassie to be with my mum and dad and we had a beautiful farm in the Tamar Valley.
“I’d planted vines there a few years prior to that and was doing my first vintage and was just living the dream – helping out at home, going surfing, being out in the vineyard, meeting a new community here in Tasmania and just loving being here.
“And one of the world’s biggest pulp mills was announced to be built in my backyard by a timber company called Gunns, and just to make things worse for me they were going to pump thirty billion litres of industrial waste into the ocean at my favourite surf spot every year.”
That led him to becoming more active in the local community – and that led to politics.
“I suppose at the time I was involved in politics because I wanted to stop this project, and ironically six months after I got into the Senate when I replaced Bob Brown in 2012, the company that was going to build this pulp mill went into liquidation, went bankrupt and that was the end of the project,” he said.
“I think Tasmania is a dress rehearsal for a much bigger stage because everywhere I look around the world if you care about climate and the environment and pollution, it’s always the big companies causing it.
“So there was plenty of battle grounds that I needed to fight on.”
Today, August 14 is his last day as Greens Senator for Tasmania before he retires. He’s highlighted some significant policy wins for the party as memorable achievements.
“The way I’d frame that is what am I most proud of… and I’ve definitely put the oceans and ocean health, not just here in Tasmania but all around the country and even internationally on the parliamentary agenda in Canberra,” he said.
“There’s some things that myself and my team and my colleagues have led on that were very new to the federal parliament.
“For example in 2012 I was the first senator to ever talk about plastics in the ocean, which is now recognised as one of the biggest pollution issues on this planet.
“Interestingly enough my first campaign in Tasmania was to get a bottle refund scheme. We had container deposit schemes around the country and only South Australia and the Northern Territory had refund schemes and now they’re all around Australia including Tassie.”
He says there’s still more to be done when it comes to plastics.
Another one of the Senator’s proud moments is work done to protect sharks around the country.
“At the time [it was] the first Senate inquiry in the world to look at how we protect ocean goers and sharks.
“We’ve [the Greens] led on work trying to stop oil and gas projects off our coastlines that risk our coastlines, especially seismic testing which has impacts on fisheries, and we worked really hard on the Great Southern Reef here in Tasmania.
“Tasmania has some of the most precious biodiverse ocean habitat on the planet, a giant kelp forest which has all vanished in the last 10 to 20 years and that’s had an impact on our fisheries and our local communities so I’ve worked really hard to try and highlight why these giant kelp forests have finished, can we regrow them and stop these invasive species from eating them.”
Other notable climate work has included campaigning on emissions from fossil fuels and coral bleaching on notable reefs including the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo.
Outside of work on climate, Senator Whish-Wilson has represented his party in the Treasury and Finance portfolios. He’s highlighted wins there including campaigning for a Royal Commission into banking misconduct.
“The big banks were ripping people off and they weren’t getting compensated and myself and a few other MP’s worked really hard to get that Royal Commission up, and there’s been a lot of legislative change since that,” he said.
I’m also really proud of work on stopping money laundering. We’ve brought in a whole new set of laws around money laundering, disclosing and multinational tax avoidance and managed to recoup billions of dollars off big multinationals that were sending their profits offshore rather than spending it in Australia on schools and hospitals and things that are really important.”
Despite being in his 15th year in the Senate, Senator Whish-Wilson says when it comes to the climate work is never done – but he says he knows a lot of good people, including his replacement Vanessa Bleyer, will carry out that legacy when he’s gone.
One of the accomplishments that stands out for the Senator from his time in politics wasn’t policy related.
It is the tireless time spent working with some of his parliamentary colleagues from across the political sphere to bring WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange home to Australia.
“When Julian’s dad came to visit Parliament in 2017 and 2018 he could only get a couple of meetings in the building with myself and [Independent Clark MP] Andrew Wilkie – no one else wanted to go anywhere near Julian Assange back then,” he said.
“He was in the Ecuardorian Embassy and Donald Trump had basically said he was the most dangerous man in the world, going after him to extradite him to the US to put him on death row or in a maximum security prison for the rest of his life.
“He was a journalist who exposed war crimes, especially US war crimes in Iraq. This is a very serious thing, and Andrew and myself and some others led a Parliamentary friends group to get him home.
“It took years to get other people on board but when he did, we had nearly 80 members.”
Members from across the political spectrum travelled to Washington to meet with [then US Ambassador] Kevin Rudd and the US Senate.
“To get them to send Julian home and make sure he wasn’t extradited,” the Senator said.
“In the end it was working with a lot of other great people around the world that really helped.
“When he landed in Canberra with Kevin Rudd, in his plane, and [Anthony] Albanese there at the airport to meet him I was on my feet speaking in the Senate.
“I remember thinking to myself that collaborative politics can really work and even though you sometimes don’t think you’re ever going to win, we’re up against Trump and the CIA and some really powerful forces, but people won out.”
It was a difficult decision for the Senator to step away from his time in politics- but said the travel and time away from his family started to take a toll.
“You’re away from your family, your community and all the things you’re connected to for easily half the year or more,” he said.
“It just takes a toll on you after a period of time, even if you stay fit and healthy and positive it just takes a toll on you after a period of time.
“I feel like if I was to run again at the next federal election in 2028 and do more time – that’s 20 years in the senate, you get less for a life sentence for murder in this country [laughs] but 20 years is a long time and I feel there’s good people who can carry the torch and take my place and the work will continue.
So what’s next for the Surfing Senator? Catching as many waves as possible is high on the agenda.
“I’m looking forward to spending more time in my community and more time with my family and to be completely honest, surfing as many waves as I can before I get too old,” he said.
“The thing about being a member of Parliament is you don’t get holidays, long service leave, the kind of normal entitlements that most people get, and even if you did it would be very hard to take it because there’s always so much work to do.
“I’m looking forward to having a really decent break… after 20 years of campaigning on the marine environment and other issues I care about I’m not going to walk away from that. I look forward to finding another way that I can contribute to protecting the ocean and promoting activism and the kind of things we need to do.
“I’ve got no doubt I’ll find something to do but right now I’m really looking forward to having some rest and looking after my health and time with family. I’m definitely looking forward to spending more time cooking… and I’m almost certainly going to go down and help some of the local vineyards where I live.
“Bit of bushwalking, camping, four wheel driving – the kinds of things I love doing as well.
“Back to my roots”.
For more on this story, take a listen to this week’s episode of iHeart Tassie:
