Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Senate and the environment and communications committee for an excellent report into the impact of seismic testing on fisheries and the marine environment. I'm very proud that the Australian Greens initiated and chaired this inquiry. It ran for over two years—partly because of COVID, but also because of the substantial response the committee received from around the country—and looked into community concerns around the impacts of seismic testing, and also the lack of understanding and lack of research that had been done into the impacts of this activity.

I wanted to see this inquiry happen because, over many years, a number of stakeholders, including fishers and commercial fishing industry stakeholders, have continually raised their concerns and anecdotal evidence about the direct impact that seismic testing is having on their fisheries. Seismic surveying relies on some of the loudest noises produced by human beings being blasted from a sonic gun down a water column potentially kilometres deep into the Earth's surface. You can imagine how loud these noises are if these blasts are actually able to penetrate the Earth's surface and be used by fossil fuel companies to find the next fossil fuel bonanza. We even heard evidence that seismic blasts off the coast of Victoria or the Great Australian Bight in the right conditions can be heard as far as the Antarctic. These are very loud noises that are blasted continuously every 10 seconds for potentially days or weeks on end. Here is the catch: when I asked about the impacts of seismic surveys back in 2013, the Liberal government at the time told me there was no evidence that these seismic surveys did any damage to fisheries. As it turns out, they were pretty much right. There was no evidence. But that's not because they didn't damage fisheries; it was because no-one had done any research into the impacts of seismic testing on commercial fish species.

Following the loss of a $50 million scallop bed off Northern Tasmania, finally some money was allocated for the University of Tasmania, the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies and other universities to start looking at the impacts. It was done in the lab initially, and the results were concerning. I'm also very proud to say—and Senator Urquhart was part of the committee—that I believe the pressure that was brought to bear by this committee led to the first ever study of seismic testing on marine life in the environment, actually in situ in the ocean—including before-and-after studies. There was the first study of its kind of a before-and-after population study on a commercial fish species. In this case, the study on the whiting species in the Otway Basin in this area that had been blasted for three months showed that 99 per cent of the whiting population had left the area. We haven't had the final report yet on the long-term impacts of that, but I understand that many of those fish still haven't returned. When I asked NOPSEMA, the regulator, about this, they said: 'Yes, of course we understood that. Fish swim away from loud noise.' But nowhere could I find that they had ever assessed the impact of these tests on the commercial fishing sector or, more broadly, on the community, tourism operators, recreational fishers, First Australians or anyone.

We have had a number of tests done now. They certainly suggest cause for concern. The committee produced an excellent report, with 19 recommendations that I believe will reform the sector, including that we need to see a lot more research and that this research needs to be funded by the fossil fuel industry before any more of this activity occurs. These uncertainties are significant and, while the regulatory framework, according to NOPSEMA, is there to manage these risks, there is no community confidence around this country that NOPSEMA manages these risks in the public interest. There is a very strong perception that the regulator is managing these risks for the oil and gas industries. In other words, it is up to you to prove that damage is being done before NOPSEMA will step in and stop an activity and it's not up to the oil and gas industries to do the research and prove they are doing no harm, even though initial studies suggest that this activity is directly harming marine life.

I'd just like to finish by saying, while the committee report was excellent, it took three attempts to get this up. We know the government went to great lengths to avoid this inquiry. That evidence was given by some stakeholders. The Greens don't believe the committee report went far enough. Indeed, it couldn't go far enough. We would like to see this activity banned from our oceans until the research has been done. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.