Penny Wright (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about a place that is close to my heart. It is a place that has been the scene of some special family holidays. It is a place which is known as Australia's Galapagos. It is a place that is just too precious to lose. This place is Kangaroo Island.

Kangaroo Island is one of Australia's most iconic wilderness destinations, and for good reason. Visitors flock from all over the globe to experience its wild coastlines, beautiful beaches, abundant wildlife and local produce. But more than this, Kangaroo Island is home to a small but vibrant community of 4,500 people, many of whom rely on fishing and tourism for their livelihoods. And it is on behalf of this community just off the coast of South Australia that I rise to speak tonight.

The very wilderness values that make Kangaroo Island unique are under threat and, as a consequence, so is the future of the people who call Kangaroo Island home. The threat is offshore oil and gas exploration and, ultimately, offshore oil and gas production. Just over a week ago, Bight Petroleum applied for approval under the Environment Protection Biodiversity and Conservation Act to begin exploring for oil and gas in Commonwealth waters to the west of Kangaroo Island.

Bight intends to undertake a 70-day seismic survey of this area between January and May next year. If the results from the seismic survey are promising, the company plans to drill a test well in either 2014 or 2015. Yesterday, a very short, 10-day public consultation period with respect to Bight Petroleum's plans came to an end. The Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Tony Burke, now has a further 10 business days to decide how he will respond to Bight Petroleum's application.

I think it is important to take note that this is the first and only time the public has been given the opportunity to formally comment on the prospect of oil and gas activities off Kangaroo Island's west coast. Back in July 2010, the federal government released two areas to the west of Kangaroo Island in its annual release of offshore exploration acreage. This is a process whereby new areas in Commonwealth waters are opened up for oil and gas exploration. In July 2011, these two lease areas, known as EPP41 and EPP42, were awarded to Bight Petroleum. There are two red flags here. First, the annual acreage release is an entirely closed process with no public participation and no community say over which areas are released.

Had these leases not been granted to Bight Petroleum back in July 2011, this area very well could have—and we say definitely should have—been included within the network of marine reserves announced by Minister Burke in July of this year. The Kangaroo Island Council specifically wrote to Minister Burke in May urging him to use the marine reserve process to create a 'no oil and gas' zone to the west of Kangaroo Island, with EPP41 and EPP42 to become a part of that no oil and gas zone when Bight Petroleum's existing leases come to an end. Clearly, in this case and in a number of others around the country, where new offshore exploration leases were granted in the middle of the marine reserve process, the government chose to give a free ride to the oil and gas industry at the expense of properly conserving Australia's magnificent marine environment. We need to rethink our federal environment laws to make sure this never happens again.

But back to the issue at hand—why does this area to the west of KI deserve such a high level of protection? The proposed seismic survey area covers a unique underwater landscape known as the Kangaroo Island Canyon and Pool. It is here that seasonal currents interact with steep-sided, narrow canyons to bring food from the deep ocean to the surface. These upwellings support and attract a melting-pot of marine life. Aggregations of krill, squid and small fish in turn attract larger predatory fish, seabirds, dolphins, seals and whales.

This marine biodiversity hotspot is a critical feeding and breeding area for a whole host of nationally listed species, both resident and migratory. It is also one of the most productive commercial fishing areas in Australia. It would be difficult to overstate the ecological, economic and social importance of these waters, first and foremost for Kangaroo Island, but also for South Australia and indeed Australia as a whole. It beggars belief than an area such as this is not deemed sufficiently important to warrant protection from offshore oil and gas activities. Unsurprisingly, the Kangaroo Island community is united in their concerns about Bight Petroleum's plans. Back in September I travelled to Kangaroo Island to meet with key community leaders about this issue. The council, local green groups and fishing organisations have all been vocal in their opposition.

Seismic testing brings its own concerns, which I will discuss in a minute, but let us not forget that such testing is merely a precursor to exploratory drilling. Even a small spill would damage the Kangaroo Island community in so many ways. Take out tourism or fishing and you have a lot of families who would have to leave the island to find work elsewhere. That would have serious ripple effects for the entire community—schools, sporting clubs and local businesses. The long-term viability of the community itself would be threatened.

Bight Petroleum's seismic survey plans in and of themselves are clearly unacceptable for a whole range of reasons. I do not have time to canvass them all now, but I will list some of the most critical flaws. First, the survey will have an impact on over 60 nationally listed species, yet Bight's referral fails to explain how it will mitigate adverse impacts on the vast majority of these.    Second, it is likely that endangered blue whales will be feeding in the area at the time of the testing. Bight Petroleum's referral relies on an unpublished and extremely sparse dataset to support its assertion that blue whales are unlikely to be present. By 'sparse', I mean four days of observation over five months.

Third, Bight Petroleum has failed to consider the use of alternative, quieter technologies. Fourth, the seismic survey is clearly a component of a larger exploration program which includes exploratory drilling, but Bight's referral contains no information at all regarding the manner in which the test drills will be carried out. Fifth, only two professional observers are proposed, when four were required to avoid impacts on blue whales in the recently approved Origin seismic survey in the Otway Basin. Inaccurate claims are also made about passive acoustic monitoring to dismiss its use in addition to human observers.

Sixth, the referral is dismissive of the many concerns raised by stakeholders. Company decision-makers are apparently of the view that stakeholders must prove risk or harm before Bight will make the effort to address any of these concerns in its EPBC Act documentation. This seems to me a perverse interpretation of the appropriate burden of proof! Overall, expert conservation stakeholders submit that the seismic survey will have a range of significant impacts which are sufficiently serious for the proposal to be rejected outright.

The Australian Greens are the only party taking these concerns seriously and the only party standing up for Kangaroo Island's environment and for the local community. Today I moved a motion calling on the Senate to recognise the ecological, economic and social importance of these waters to the west of Kangaroo Island and calling on Minister Burke to use his powers under the EPBC Act to reject Bight Petroleum's application as clearly unacceptable. Predictably, sadly, this motion was opposed by both of the old parties.

Clearly there is huge concern in the community that the short-sighted greed of the mining boom is blinding governments and corporations to the need to protect places that are too precious to lose. That today's motion was voted down is yet another example of the old parties putting the interests of the resources industry before the interests of people and nature. Minister Burke and Bight Petroleum need to know that the Greens will not stop supporting the Kangaroo Island community and will not stop campaigning on this issue, until the marine environment to the west of the island is given the level of protection it deserves. Some places are just too precious to lose—and this is definitely one of them.