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

WHISH-WILSON () (): I want to highlight in the Australian Senate today that seismic testing corporations TGS and Schlumberger are jointly proposing the biggest ever 3D seismic blasting survey on record globally off the west coast of Tasmania and the south-west coast of Victoria. I don't think I need to highlight to senators the irony of embarking on one of the biggest fossil fuel exploration projects in our nation's history at a time of climate emergency, when all the warning signs are there. We have record low sea ice in the Australian Antarctic. Record temperatures are being set all around the world, including in our own nation. There are forecasts for a record super El Nino event in Australia this year. We've had devastating back-to-back bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef. There's the march of invasive species along our eastern seaboard and the loss of our giant kelp forests. I could spend more than 10 minutes just listing the siren calls for action.

Yet most Australians aren't aware that, off our southern coast, fossil fuel companies are still running rampant because this government and the previous government have given them the green light to do so. In their search to facilitate new oil and gas fields to exploit, TGS and Schlumberger are eyeing off 55,000 square kilometres of ocean to blast between Tasmania and Victoria in the Otway Basin. The project's mammoth operational area is 38 kilometres from land at the closest point and will see seismic vessels tow up to 14 seismic streamers eight to 10 kilometres in length, equipped with high-powered air guns designed to penetrate the earth's crust from the surface of the ocean, including oceans that are over a kilometre deep. These air guns generate one of the loudest noises produced by human beings and would blast the ocean floor every 10 to 15 seconds, 24 hours a day, seven days a week for up to 400 days.

I initiated and chaired a Senate inquiry—the world's first inquiry into seismic testing—a number of years ago. We heard that these blasts in Bass Strait and the Southern Ocean can be detected by our seismic equipment in Antarctica. We heard anecdotal evidence from fishing communities on the west coast of Tasmania about their windowsills shaking while this blast was occurring of the coast. Yet we are doing it in two marine parks with well-established migration routes for whales, close to significant commercial fishing fields. It's insanity. Unsurprisingly, the Senate inquiry also found that seismic blasting is serious and potentially fatal for marine life. Yet this proposal covers two Commonwealth marine parks and biologically important areas for EPBC listed species, including the pygmy blue whale and southern right whale. The environmental plan for this destructive proposal was submitted to the government's offshore energy regulator, NOPSEMA, for the 30-day public comment period in September last year, where it received over 30,000 public comment submissions, with a vast majority opposing these destructive plans. This is one of the largest public comment responses ever to a seismic blasting proposal and it signals the enormous shift we are seeing in the public's response to the continuation of these destructive projects. They are exploring for the exact product that, when found and burnt, also kills our oceans.

TGS and Schlumberger have stated that they are now going to resubmit their environmental plan to NOPSEMA after looking at the public comments. But get this—the revised environmental plan will not be made available for public comment. This has enraged many who consider the flaws in the original environmental plan so significant that the revised environmental plan had to be made.

As I and my colleagues have often said in this place, the best antidote to climate despair is climate action. I want to give a shout-out to a legend today—Annie Ford, a marine scientist. She spent much of her career working for companies involved in seismic surveying before she left the industry because of their damaging practices. Because of her personal experience as a scientist she is now working with the Surfrider Foundation—an NGO I used to be involved with prior to entering politics—in its fight to advocate against this destructive proposal in the Bass Strait. She is riding her bike a gruelling 4,000 kilometres across the eastern seaboard of Australia. In fact, I believe she is due to depart Tasmania for Victoria any day now, having ridden from Hobart. She will be doing this for the next two months, looking to spark conversations along her journey alongside the Surfrider Foundation's tour of its new film Southern Blast, which highlights the beauty and uniqueness of the Southern Ocean and our Great Southern Reef and why its precious marine life, its communities and its fishing industries shouldn't be put at risk by fossil fuel corporations.

Many of these big corporations—and you can take your pick; Woodside Petroleum is endeavouring to undertake another massive seismic survey in whale migratory paths off the north-west shelf of WA—buy their hefty political power in this place with donations. They have also been conducting seismic testing for oil and gas for the last 50 years and have had respective governments eating out of the palms of their hands. Successive governments have sat by for so long while big oil and gas companies have run rampant in our oceans, which is why in 2020 I moved to have a Senate inquiry into seismic testing.

It's interesting that a trillion dollar industry around the world hasn't funded any research into the seismic impacts on commercial fishing species. Think about that. Companies that make billions of dollars didn't want anybody to know about the impacts of this activity. That research is slowly occurring. Every time we have a new research project and find out more we are more concerned about the impact of this activity.

This inquiry was the first of its kind. I was very pleased with the amount of scrutiny that parliament applied to this industry. We found that the regulatory framework doesn't provide sufficient environmental or economic protection from the impacts of seismic testing and gives too much latitude to a regulator who is perceived to be too close to the petroleum industry. NOPSEMA may be independent of government with the way it's set up, but I don't believe from the evidence we heard in the Senate inquiry that it is independent of industry.

The tide is now turning. As Australians go to film nights like the Surfrider Foundation are putting on they are understanding that their surrounding oceans are under siege. This is incredibly so at a time of climate crisis. They are unnecessarily being exploited by reckless and rapacious fossil fuel corporations. In this country we are already overshooting our climate targets and, if we go out exploring for new fossil fuel projects, we have no way back to meet these climate targets. The International Energy Agency tells us we need to leave unexploited fossil fuel deposits in the ground if we are going to meet our Paris commitments. We need to rapidly transition to renewable energy.

I would like to finish by saying that the Greens still have a private senator's bill before this chamber to ban all new offshore oil and gas exploration. Soon it will be time for politicians to listen to their communities and back in this bill. We also need to stop the annual handout of oceans to companies like TGS and Schlumberger. Up to 80,000 square kilometres was handed out in the last ocean acreage under the previous government. It's got to stop. We need to listen to communities, we need to take climate action seriously and we need to protect our oceans.