Tuesday, 25 August 2026

 Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (13:02): The laws to protect our oceans in Australia and Victoria are completely broken. Right now oil and gas companies can basically take whatever they want from drilling in our oceans, make billions shipping it overseas and pay next to no tax. Apparently when they are done, these same companies can just walk away from the toxic rubbish that they leave in the oceans and leave taxpayers to foot the bill. It is a giant legal loophole, and I would like to thank the Wilderness Society, who recently exposed this with a court case.

The Wilderness Society took Australia’s offshore oil and gas regulator to court, arguing that our laws mean that companies should have to prove that they have put money aside for the clean-up once they close their oil and gas wells. But unfortunately they lost the case, because apparently Australia’s laws are so weak that gas companies do not actually have a legal obligation to clean up the mess that they leave in our oceans. Now it is the Wilderness Society who is left to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in court fees and the taxpayer who is often left to pay to clean up the mess that these companies leave in our oceans. What an absolute joke. Clearly we need urgent law reform in Australia. The amount of oil and gas rubbish in our oceans at the moment will cost $60 billion to clean up. The Greens in power would change the law to make fossil fuel companies wear this cost, not taxpayers. Labor, however, seem content with leaving the laws as they are and putting taxpayers and our wildlife at risk.