Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The purpose of this bill, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Heritage Listing for the Bight) Bill 2018, is to bestow greater environmental protection upon the Great Australian Bight and those who rely upon it for their livelihoods by granting it National Heritage status.

The Great Australian Bight is one of the few remaining large coastal regions in the world that has not yet been overexploited. The Bight is a biodiversity hotspot, a major fisheries resource and tourism drawcard, and the source of the livelihoods and the way of life of towns and cities across the entire coastline of South Australia and beyond.

And yet, under a Labor government, the former Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson, opened the Bight for oil drilling just as British Petroleum was spewing forth 4.9 million barrels of oil—that's 780,000 cubic metres—into the Gulf of Mexico in the notorious Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Eleven people died in that disaster. The full catastrophic effect upon marine life, the environmental food chains and resultant health impacts are still not fully known, but the indications are alarming and the effects continue to this day.

However, it is not alarmism to say that my community of Mayo and the communities along the South Australian shorelines do not want to see that happen again or to our region. This is not a left- or right-wing issue. Rural and urban communities have lined up across South Australia to voice their opposition.

There are 13 local councils in South Australia that currently oppose seismic drilling, seismic testing, in the Bight, including all of the coastal councils in my electorate of Mayo: Alexandrina Council, Kangaroo Island Council, the District Council of Yankalilla and the City of Victor Harbor.

My community of Mayo has been polled by the Australia Institute as having 74 per cent support for World Heritage protection of the Bight and majority support from voters across all political parties.

The current government is simply ignoring community sentiment across my electorate, South Australia and the Bight. However, the same can be said of the opposition.

The Labor Party talk a big game about protecting jobs and about acting on climate change, but they have been notably silent on drilling for oil in the Bight. Not only is the Labor Party remaining complicit in this folly; they are the ones originally responsible for it.

Whatever did happen to former Minister Martin Ferguson? He unashamedly profiteered from his actions and connections made as a resources minister by becoming the head of the oil and gas lobby—yet another reason we need a national integrity commission!

I recognise that, according to current modelling produced by the big oil companies, the chance of a spill is predicted to be relatively low, yet the impacts of any spill are modelled as utterly catastrophic. The latest foreign company to line up to have a crack at our Bight is Equinor, a Norwegian state oil company. Their worst-case discharge estimates range between 4.3 million barrels to 7.9 million barrels—that's between approximately one and two the destruction of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The worst-case scenario would see oil spread from Albany, right across the Bight, to envelope the entire coastline of Tasmania and wrap around the east coast as far as Port Macquarie. Suddenly, South Australia's problem would become Western Australia, Tasmania, New South Wales and Victoria's problem too.

My community and the communities across south-eastern Australia would be devastated. Every swimmer at the beach, every fisherman and fisherwoman, every bed and breakfast, every fish and chip shop and everyone anywhere near the coast would be affected. There is an economic argument for banning oil drilling in the Bight.

I would like to see such risky deepwater drilling in the Bight banned altogether. However, I recognise the affection for abdicating Australia's sovereignty to avoid so-called 'sovereign risk'.

This catchphrase argument amounts to: 'We can't stop a bad decision once it's been made because it might scare off future investors.' Well, I, for one, want to avoid bad decisions in the first place!

And I believe that this bill strikes the right balance between sovereign risk and social, economic and environmental protection.

In recognition of that balance, the bill does not propose an outright ban on oil drilling in the Bight, but it does require that all activities carried out in Commonwealth waters in the Bight do not have unacceptable impacts upon:

This would set the current threshold for resource exploitation substantially higher so as to adequately safeguard the livelihoods of South Australian coastal communities and also the environment in the Bight upon which they rely. This is what the community wants. This is what my community says.

We are not antidevelopment, but we must manage catastrophic risk at the appropriately high threshold. It also opens up the pathway for the Bight to become a World Heritage listed area and join its rightful place as one of the natural wonders of Australia that includes the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu and Uluru.

In conclusion, I urge the government and opposition to heed what the community wants and prevent risky oil drilling in the Bight. This bill strikes a careful balance, and, I believe, the right balance. I would like at this point to reach out to all of the Hands Across the Sand communities and all of the people across Mayo and beyond in South Australia who have called for us to have World Heritage status. This is a great first step. I commend this bill to the House.

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