The Australian Democrats saved the Franklin.

The Franklin river was protected from a proposed dam by the legislative actions of the Australian Democrats

Lake Pedder was a small lake located in South-West Tasmania. Because of its incredible beauty and environmental significance there was horror and outrage that the Hydro Electric Commission planned to drown the lake with a massive dam.

Thus was born the first serious environmental movement in Tasmania, around 1972. There was even a suspicion that one of the leaders of the campaign was murdered such was the ferocity of the fight.

The dam was built and the lake disappeared under a vast reservoir of water.

Fast forward a decade and a new fight erupted over plans to build a dam on one of the last remaining wild rivers. Pedants have argued that the dam would not be built on the Franklin, but on the Gordon river. However, the result would have led to the Franklin river being submerged under the rising waters of this dam.

By this time the Tasmanian environmental movement was very strong, and its leader was a young doctor named Bob Brown. He was one of 16 “Greenies” who founded the Tasmanian Wilderness Society ($2 membership) and the fight got underway.

The Tasmanian Wilderness Society was a Tasmanian environmental group that started in 1976 in response to a proposal by the state's Hydro Electric Commission to construct a dam on the Gordon River, downstream from the Franklin River, that led to the Franklin Dam controversy.

The campaign to save the Franklin grew very quickly and attracted protestors from all over Australia. Footage shows massive street marches in the capital cities, and in that footage we catch glimpses of an Australian Democrats banner.

The Democrats had formed in 1977 and by 1980 there were 5 Democrats senators in the Australian parliament.

In 1981 the Democrats leader Senator Don Chipp undertook a rafting trip down the Franklin

“When he returned from the river on Friday, he pledged that the Australian Democrats would do everything in their power to support conservationists in their battle against further hydro development in the south-west wilderness.” (SMH)

Chipp vowed that when the new senators took their seats in July 1981 they would initiate an enquiry into Tasmania’s future energy needs with reference to preserving the south-west wilderness under the National Heritage.

By 1982 the protest movement to save the Franklin was in full swing. Street marches, civil disobedience, mass jailings and the growing realisation that maybe political action was needed.

The Australian Greens had their roots in the Tasmanian struggle but the party was not formed federally until 1992. (Brown resigned from the Tasmanian Parliament in 1993, and in 1996 he was elected as a senator for Tasmania, the first elected as an Australian Greens candidate.)

It was the Australian Democrats who came up with the political solution to the Franklin Dam problem. In 1982 Senator Colin Mason (NSW) presented a private members bill to the Senate called

WORLD HERITAGE PROPERTIES PROTECTION BILL 1982.

The aim of this bill was to grant power to the Australian government to intervene and even block actions designed to interfere with world heritage sites.

Colin Mason

Private members bills almost never become acts of the parliament, but in the context of the Dams campaign Colin Mason's bill became the template for the
World Heritage Properties Conservation Act 1983. that was put to the Australian parliament by the Labor party and passed.

It was the Australian Democrats, not the Greens (who did not even exist at the time) who effectively saved the Franklin river.