Motions

Great Australian Bight

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (17:37): I move:

That this council—

1. Acknowledges that the Norwegian government owns 67 per cent of the oil and gas exploration company Equinor;

2. Further acknowledges that Equinor plans to drill in the pristine and environmentally sensitive waters of the Great Australian Bight despite overwhelming public opposition to the proposed drilling;

3. Supports the Norwegian government's decision in 2018 that its own sensitive Lofoten Islands be protected against oil and gas drilling;

4. Recognise that our own Great Australian Bight should also be similarly protected;

5. Further recognises that it is within the Norwegian government's power, as majority shareholder, to stop Equinor's plan to drill for oil and gas in the Great Australian Bight; and

6. Requests the Norwegian parliament take note of the wishes of the majority of South Australians and broader Australians by imploring the Norwegian government to have Equinor abandon its exploration plans to drill for oil and gas in the Great Australian Bight.

I rise to speak on the motion in my name regarding oil drilling in the Great Australian Bight. I cannot recall a conservation issue in more recent times which has resonated across Australia and internationally as much as this one. The tidal wave of opposition to drilling for oil in these pristine waters has united a majority of Australians in protest. Even the most unlikely voices in our society are screaming out loud to be heard. The warnings and alarm are not only coming from the customary green activist groups but from all walks of life. Our Indigenous communities, schoolkids, everyday families, seniors, celebrities, sportspeople, politicians and industries that have a stake in it have spoken out strongly.

Life carries risks every day and many of them are so manageable that they become insignificant as we go about our daily lives: driving to work, picking up the kids from school, taking a holiday, playing sport, cleaning the gutters, even avoiding Carlton in your office tipping context. However, there are some risks not worth taking. Would anyone seriously pay for a round trip to Mars if they knew they would never make it back home? Would you risk trusting an oil giant when it says that it has all the contingencies covered to either prevent or minimise the effect of an oil spill in an environment so precious as the Great Australian Bight where there are so many rare and special marine species?

Most Australians do not trust Equinor, despite its assurances that the risk is low and that its extensive work in preparing its voluminous environmental plan shows that it can safely drill in the Bight to the unprecedented depth of two kilometres. This global monolith, and the oil and gas industry generally, also like to point out that there has been oil and gas drilling going on without serious incident in the Bass Strait since the 1960s, but we do know that they happen.

How much faith can we have in the so-called independent regulator, the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA), which will determine the future of any drilling in the Bight? Not much, when you learn that there was a 10,500-litre oil spill in an offshore well somewhere off the coast of Australia in 2016 but NOPSEMA refused to reveal where it occurred or name the company responsible. Only after prodding from a media outlet did it confirm that the leak that was caused by a faulty seal went unnoticed for two months.

There have been other safety breaches at Exxon Mobil-operated oil platforms in the Bass Strait since 2013, including one where the regulator found it failed to properly respond to a spill only 45 kilometres off the coast of Lakes Entrance in Gippsland and that it posed a significant threat to the environment. What was the penalty? An improvement notice; no fine. Yet, a fisho not wearing a life jacket on the waters or taking undersized fish would cop a bigger penalty.

Companies are compelled by law to report leaks, but why the secrecy? The public has a right to know. Another thing I find disturbing is that NOPSEMA does not require oil wells to be inspected during construction to ensure they meet safety standards, nor does it have a set standard for well control. Ten years ago, poor decisions in construction caused Australia's worst ever oil spill in the Timor Sea, where 2,000 barrels of oil and gas a day leaked into the ocean for 10 weeks before the well was finally capped.

The industry, regulators and Equinor say safety measures have improved dramatically since then. In its modelling for the Bight, Equinor says it would take 17 days to respond to a spill in a best-case scenario; 39 days in the worst case; while its goal was to have it fixed within 26 days. In a worst-case scenario, a spill could leak between 4.3 million barrels and 7.9 million barrels, spreading from Albany in Western Australia to Port Macquarie in New South Wales. That is a significant distance.

Adelaide would have a 97 per cent chance of being hit. The damage would be immense on Kangaroo Island and Port Lincoln. The risks to our local fishing industry, worth $440 million a year, and coastal tourism, worth $1 billion a year, is enormous. The Bight attracts eight million visitors a year, marvelling at the marine diversity, such as whales in calving season.

Incredibly, BP, Equinor's former partner in the Bight, reckoned that an oil spill would be a good thing for local economies involved in clean-up operations. The fishing industry in the Bight region directly employs 3,900 people. A spill would threaten over 9,000 jobs in South Australia. How could that be good for our economy?

In contrast, Equinor says its project would create 1,361 jobs and return $5.9 billion a year to Australia's gross domestic product if it discovers a major oil field, but it would need to drill more than 100 wells and those benefits would not be realised for at least another 20 or so years. South Australians would see little of that revenue because much of it would go to the federal government's cashbox through the petroleum resource rent tax. And the profits, of course, would mostly go offshore to Equinor and its major shareholder, the Norwegian government. Compare that to the total value to Australia's economy from fishing and tourism in this region, which is in the vicinity of $10 billion—twice as much as the Great Barrier Reef. So is the risk worth it? I think not.

I met with Equinor representatives here recently. They were at pains to tell me of the precautions they have taken, and explained there are several failsafe steps to minimise the fallout. They were also mindful of the concerns being expressed by Australians, hence their extensive environmental report.

According to Greenpeace figures obtained from Norwegian regulators, Equinor has had more than 50 safety and control breaches, including 10 oil leaks, in the past 3½ years—and in environments with stricter conditions than in Australia. In 2018, Equinor withdrew from drilling in its own sensitive Lofoten Islands in the Arctic because of environmental concerns. The Norwegian government owns 67 per cent of that company, and I believe it should apply the same principles here.

As we know, there is a federal election on Saturday. Do not be fooled, as Labor and the Liberals are fence sitting on this very important issue. I urge all voters who care about the Great Australian Bight to cast their vote for the candidates who will have influence in the new government, Centre Alliance and the Greens.

Later this year, I will be following in the footsteps of that intrepid Labor explorer for Mawson, Leon Bignell, to Oslo to meet with representatives of the Norwegian government, other Norwegian MPs and Equinor to again state the case in the strongest possible way that Big Oil is not welcome in our bight.

We have seen large, passionate protests on our beaches and coastlines and in Norway. There are more to come. I hope Equinor and the Norwegian government are taking notice because, as history has shown so many times, people power is a formidable and unstoppable force.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. T.J. Stephens.