2024-07-24
News today that the Albanese Labor government will finalise new permits for offshore gas exploration and carbon capture and storage means more of Australia’s oceans will be handed over to multinational corporations for oil and gas drilling and development at the expense of our environment and a safe climate future.
The government’s announcement will lock in new gas drilling in our oceans and see up to 10 permits finalised for ‘unicorn’ carbon capture and storage exploration.
Lines attributable to Greens spokesperson for Healthy Oceans, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson:
“Today we again see Labor letting their true colours shine, colours that show the Albanese government is as hopelessly captured by the climate-wrecking gas cartel as their predecessors under Scott Morrison.
“Labor came to government promising to end the climate wars. Today’s announcement of new permits for new gas drilling and carbon pollution dumping is another betrayal in a long line of fossil fuel approvals for this government.
“Labor’s climate plans are nothing more than plans to give multinational corporations, who the ATO have labelled “systemic non-payers of tax”, the greenlight to dump carbon pollution under the seabed in Bass Strait, risking marine life, fisheries and coastal communities in the process. It is a sick joke to call this climate action.
“Labor gave the game away when it announced its Future Gas Strategy in May this year. While the planet enters a climate tipping point, Labor wants to lock in fossil fuel development beyond 2050.
“I challenge Minister King to point to a subsea carbon pollution dumping project that has reached commercial viability in Australia. Carbon pollution dumping is a sham and designed to do nothing more than greenwash and prolong our reliance on the same fossil fuels that when burnt are boiling our oceans and bleaching our Great Barrier Reef.
“In March this year thousands of concerned ocean lovers rallied on the beaches of Torquay in Victoria in protest against new oil and gas drilling in our oceans. This at the same time as the Prime Minister continues to leave coastal communities in New South Wales in the dark on PEP-11.
“Everywhere you look this Labor government is backing away from more urgent climate action and leaning more heavily into new fossil fuels in our oceans."
Lines attributable to Greens spokesperson for First Nations and Resources, Senator Dorinda Cox:
“Exploration, seismic blasting and existing gas infrastructure along the south west coastline is already impacting Sea Country, and contributing to climate change.
“For governments and mining companies to take fossil fuels like gas and repackage them as ‘green’ ignores both the immediate environmental risks of gas mining and extraction to Country as well as the irreversible damage of methane and CO2 emissions on the world around us.
“This year on World Environment Day, the Southern Ocean Protection Embassy Collective launched a Citizens’ Protection Declaration in response to the threats Koontapool (Southern Right Whales) continue to face from gas exploration and extraction.These permits again ignore and are blatantly dismissive of the rights of First Peoples in Australia to protect and preserve their Sea Country."