Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Woodside wants to turn the pristine waters of Western Australia into an industrial gas zone. The fossil fuel giant is already ploughing ahead with the first stage of its Burrup Hub, drilling up to 30 gas wells at Scarborough, near Ningaloo Reef. Now Woodside has his sights set on the national treasure of Scott Reef, off the Kimberley coast, a biodiversity hotspot, home to the ancient coral which has grown for over 15 million years. Woodside wants to drill 50 additional wells at Browse, some as close as two kilometres from the reef itself. Extracting the gas will create a void under the reef, causing it to sink into the ocean. When research showed that Sandy Inlet, a part of Scott Reef where hundreds of threatened green sea turtles lay their eggs each year, was in danger of being washed away permanently due to Browse, do you know what Woodside's response was? Sandy Inlet would wash away anyway due to sea level rise from climate change, and drilling for gas at Browse would likely just make that process happen faster.

The audacity of Woodside to profit from extracting and burning gas, resulting in sea level rise, and to then claim that the additional destruction caused by Browse doesn't matter—well, it matters to the hundreds of threatened green sea turtles, and it matters to the millions of Australians who would rather protect our precious marine environment than see it drilled for gas, which will still be operating in 2070, well past the deadline for Australia to phase out the fossil fuels.

Recent reporting at Western Australia's EPA has confirmed what we have long known—Woodside's Browse project would be devastating for the environment in Western Australia and is an unacceptable risk. Woodside's own environmental approval documents show a worst-case oil spill at Browse would cover Scott Reef and 54 endangered species such as whales, sharks, fish, turtles and coral. Putting our marine life at risk to suit the financial interests of one of the world's polluters is unacceptable. For Labor to urge protection of the Great Barrier Reef on one side of the country and approve Woodside's Browse project on the other side of the country would be hypocritical at best and a disaster for nature at its worst.

The federal environment minister has the power to protect Scott Reef and the endangered wildlife that call it home by rejecting this project and its unacceptable impacts. Minister Tanya Plibersek must unequivocally rule out Woodside's environment-wrecking project and instead protect this precious ecosystem.