Bills

Public Finance and Audit (Fossil Fuel Sponsorships) Amendment Bill

Introduction and First Reading

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (16:38): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Public Finance and Audit Act 1987. Read a first time.

Second Reading

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (16:39): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

It is an absolute pleasure to introduce this bill today, the fossil fuel advertising prohibition bill. It is timely that we do this. We are in a changed and still changing climate. Every decade since 1950 has been warmer than the last—every single one—and, globally, September 2024 is on track to be the 14^th hottest consecutive month on record and temperatures are indeed steadily rising.

Across Australia, more frequent and more destructive bushfires and floods are starting to form the fabric of our everyday lives, impacting not only those who are directly affected but also our first responders and those who support survivors through the long-term consequences of these events. Carbon dioxide levels are at their highest in at least two million years and levels of other greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide, far more powerful at trapping heat than CO₂, continue to rise.

A hotter climate, bushfires and floods which devastate lives, livelihoods and flora and fauna, are the proven consequences of our continued use of fossil fuels. We need to face facts: fossil fuels have had their day. Governments have declared climate emergencies and individuals, communities and small businesses and so many more are working to reduce their carbon emissions, yet fossil fuel advertising continues unabated in South Australia.

These big corporations, which really sell their products directly to the general population, see their sponsorship of sport and arts as a way of buying that ongoing public support for their operations, which they do not currently have but they are sports washing and arts washing their way into continuing to hold a social licence. Allowing them to continue advertising normalises the continued use of fossil fuels, it reinforces existing patterns of behaviour across the community, and it undermines the sense of urgency in implementing the behavioural changes. It flies in the face of our state's 2022 declaration of a climate emergency to continue to allow fossil fuels to sports wash or arts wash their way through to the South Australian public, funded by the South Australian citizens.

Many sports organisations across Australia have already got clearly stated aims to reduce their carbon footprint and to promote positive action on the environment. Individuals, too, are using their public profiles to put fossil fuel sponsorship under increased public scrutiny. Climate repair advocate Pat Cummins spoke out in 2022, using his high profile to effectively end the sponsorship of the Australian men's cricket team by Alinta. Whilst he had felt uncomfortable about Cricket Australia's relationship with Alinta right from the start, Cummins felt able to speak out only when the team was performing well.

The core activities of fossil fuel corporations continue to impact our climate and our wellbeing. The health impacts alone are devastating. At a time when community involvement in sporting activities is looked to by many to mitigate the mental health impacts of climate change, these much-needed sporting activities are themselves being co-opted as they are being impacted by a warming climate. Climate change is not selective about who it impacts: both elite and community sports are affected, and we know that children playing community-level sports are amongst the most vulnerable.

By 2024, heatwaves in Melbourne and Sydney could reach highs of 50° Celsius, threatening the viability of course of internationally recognised events, such as the Boxing Day Test or the Australian Open. Significant economic factors will be felt if changed behaviour sees spectators stay home to watch rather than attend in person. Even greater economic impacts of course will be felt when the events are postponed or cancelled completely.

Climate change not only poses significant threats to participant health, we are also seeing it drive longer, more intense bushfire seasons, which expose both participants and spectators to dangerously high levels of air pollution. It is not just sport and the millions of people who view and identify with sport who are suffering. In 2022 alone, 20 music festivals were cancelled across Australia due to extreme weather.

Australians are increasingly wising up to what is going on and 60 per cent of us see fossil fuel sponsorship as the new cigarette advertising. A majority want to see fossil fuel sponsorship right out of sport, as was the case with alcohol and tobacco advertising in the past. Increased public scrutiny is making an impact but it is not doing so quickly enough. Research shows that banning fossil fuel advertising can contribute to community recognition of that harm. It is also an important social tipping point, an intervention that is a small change but it can trigger systemic intervention.

Fossil fuel corporations choose to sponsor sport as a means of continuing their social licence to operate. They do it because it is good for their business. We must break that business model. This is in spite of the fact that they do not sell their products directly to the general population. It is important for them to be associated not only with the detrimental impacts of their industry but also that they not be associated with the things that people enjoy, such as sport, festivals and the arts.

The value of a professional sports team to fossil fuel companies is not to be underestimated. That is why 73 per cent of coal, gas and oil mining energy providers or distributor partnerships are associated with professional sports teams. Sport, clearly, however, has the upper hand. Corporate sponsorship from the fossil fuel sector can be replaced over time but it is hard to see how fossil fuel corporations can ever possibly replace the benefits that they are deriving from their sponsorship of sports. Fossil fuel corporations desperately need those professional sports and are unlikely to choose to walk away from this relationship voluntarily.

In 2019-20, Santos alone was responsible for approximately 28.6 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent from the end-use of the natural gas it supplied. It is easy to see why fossil fuel corporations would want ordinary Australians, ordinary South Australians, to remember them fondly in connection with something more positive than their destructive emissions. Being connected to a positive activity is very strategic: 77 per cent of Australians describe themselves as sports fans. Just as has been the case in the past, regulatory change for sports sponsorships and state sponsorships will positively impact community attitudes and expectations, and it will change behaviour.

Sport in itself is highly resilient with a history of successfully moving away from corporate sponsorships that have brought reputational risk with them. Tobacco and alcohol have both faced regulatory control of their use of sport as a promotional platform. Regulatory change was effected because of public concern about the detrimental impacts that they have on the health and wellbeing of individuals and of communities.

This bill will ensure that should the Tour Down Under continue to be a major event of this state, it would need to dump Santos as a sponsor. It outlines those fossil fuel entities and operations that would no longer be able to sports-wash or arts-wash or green-wash their rightly sullied reputations. It would stop our state from engaging in the hypocritical acts that it currently does, where we declare a climate emergency in 2022 and then continue business as usual and have our clean, green major cycling event every summer sponsored by Santos. It stinks.

That is why this bill would provide a very simple way to address what is a very serious issue. It gives the government a way forward. It ensures that fossil fuel activities would no longer enjoy the benefits of being promoted and associated with state-sponsored events where South Australians, quite rightly, feel good about those events.

Santos knows that the writing is on the wall. Santos itself, in its own community grant eligibility checklist document, which is available on their website under the Community Investment Framework Vision 2040 application form, states to those who seek to partner with Santos, whether they are small community groups or larger organisations or individuals—it gives them a warning, and it says:

From time to time, Santos and our community partners may be the target of activism related to our operations (e.g. protests at events or correspondence for activist groups). Please make sure your organisation/group Management and/or Board have considered and accepted the potential risk associated with activism.

So Santos are aware that their reputation will, rightly, bring what they call activism, what I would call advocacy for a safe planet, and they are aware of the dangers of being associated with Santos. Unfortunately, our state government does not seem to understand those dangers, and the hypocrisy of this state when it comes to partnering with these fossil fuel entities, and we continue on our merry way of allowing major events in this state to sportswash fossil fuel entities.

We have seen wonderful—what Santos would call activism, and I would call advocacy—advocacy from teams such as the Diamonds, Australia's netball team, that dumped Hancock Prospecting from their sponsorship. In 2021, a deal between Santos and Tennis Australia was dumped just one year into a multi-year agreement, because Tennis Australia was a signatory to the UN Sports for Climate Action network, and realised the folly of that dopey deal that they had signed themselves up to. You cannot talk the talk without walking the walk.

This government has declared a climate emergency. This parliament supported that in both houses in 2022. It is time for the Malinauskas government to come clean with the people of Australia, and stop allowing fossil fuel companies to sportswash or artswash their way, with the support of public money and public goodwill through public events in this state that are funded publicly, to continue. To allow the sportswashing of companies such as Santos cannot continue to be condoned by this parliament.

I hope that this vote and this bill, when we do take it to a vote, will be an opportunity for the Malinauskas government to use a tool easily at its disposal through the Auditor-General's arrangements to ensure that going forward—even if a fossil fuel company such as Santos, or so many others, wishes to associate and sportswash its way out of its rightly sullied reputation—that it will not be able to do so with naming rights or logos, or the very reasons that they opt in for these sponsorship and advertising deals, the goodwill that comes with being associated with 'good' events. This has to end. And South Australia would not be leading the way if we were to do this. Indeed, there are over 40 places across the world that have already either banned fossil fuel advertising or sponsorships in whole or in part.

The ACT here in Australia banned fossil fuel ads on light rail in 2015. And across Australia we have seen places such as the Blue Mountains, Byron Bay, Charles Sturt, Darebin, Fremantle, Glen Eira, Inner West, Lane Cove, Maribyrnong, Merri-Bek, Mitcham, Northern Beaches, Sydney, Waratah-Wynyard, Wingecarribee and Yarra take climate action and cut their ties to fossil fuel sportswashing, greenwashing, artswashing, allowing them to promote themselves to the public in a way that seeks to continue their business model. That is already in Australia. South Australia could be the first state to take that sort of action, and follow the lead of the ACT.

Globally, however, we have seen in the Netherlands Amersfoort, Amstelveen and Amsterdam, Basingstoke in the UK, Bern in Switzerland, Bloemendaal in the Netherlands, Cambridge in the UK, Coventry in the UK, Deane Borough in the UK, Eindhoven in the Netherlands, Edinburgh in the UK, Enschede in the Netherlands, France—right across the entire country, Groningen in the Netherlands, Grenoble in France, Haarlem in the Netherlands, Lancy in Switzerland, Leiden in the Netherlands, Liverpool in the UK, Lyon in France, North Holland in the Netherlands, North Somerset in the UK, Nijmegen in the Netherlands, Norwich in the UK, Sao Paulo in Brazil, Sheffield, Somerset in the UK, Stockholm in Sweden, Tilburg in the Netherlands, Toronto in Canada, Utrecht in the Netherlands, Vevey in Switzerland, Zwolle in the Netherlands and, of course, The Hague, take this sort of action.

We have heard this week that South Australia wishes to host COP31 in 2027. What an embarrassment it would be to have the conference of parties, some 197 countries, attend that COP31 and still have our state allowing fossil fuel companies to sportswash their way. Would we perhaps have COP31 sponsored by Santos was a question a journalist put to me this week. I would certainly hope not, but unless this state starts to get real about actually taking climate action and, as I say, not just talks the talk but walks the walk, and does so by withdrawing the opportunities of public goodwill and public cash being used to greenwash these companies into the future, we will be an international embarrassment.

Forty places of those 197—and now also The Hague, if you add that, to make 198, where they have also recently announced a ban that will soon be implemented—have already taken this climate action. No doubt more will have by the time we get to 2027. This bill allows the Malinauskas government to put in a bid for COP31 that will not be seen as hypocritical, but also it will be doing the right thing and the thing that South Australians expected us to do when we declared a climate emergency in this state. It will keep the Malinauskas Labor government's promise for them in that, when you declare a climate emergency, you actually treat this as the emergency is and you throw everything you have at ending the harm being caused. We cannot allow these fossil fuel entities to continue to greenwash their way with the blessing of our government events.

With that, this is a very simple bill, tackling a very large issue that will go a long way to showing the public of South Australia where the true commitment lies in terms of this declared climate emergency. With that, I commend the bill.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.