Senator BROWN (8:46 PM) —The Greens will be supporting the amendments. They do not give teeth to the bill, but they give an indication of teething troubles. I think it was John Gould who said, back in 1863 or thereabouts, about the Tasmanian tiger, that not many years must elapse before that creature went to extinction. He was noting the troubles and so on. There is an inverse process going on here. It is going to be many years before this bill becomes worthy of becoming the environmental legislation that this nation should have. Incremental bits and pieces are being added on against enormous pressure to prevent that from happening. The problem with that process is that the government can go to a series of players and, as Senator Lundy has just pointed out, shed off pieces each time, which then have to be picked up—hopefully, somewhere further down the line.

That said, who knows what the final vote on the legislation will be? I will not be supporting it, but I have been around long enough to know that one has to stand by even little increments on the environment. So I will be supporting the amendments. Goodness knows: somewhere an eyebright or something might have its status marginally improved by some clause in the legislation. It is like the butterfly's wings moving in the forest somewhere. Many of these amendments are hoping that sort of thing, because this legislation simply does not measure up. Practice has found that it does not measure up to protecting the nation's heritage. But, for the reasons that I have outlined, I will be supporting the amendments. I would rather do that than reject the very marginal improvement that they might make to very faulty legislation.