Tuesday, 18 November 2025

 Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (13:42): Last week my team and I hosted a parliamentary screening of Coral’s Last Stand, a documentary following marine scientists and advocates working to protect Scott Reef, a 15-million-year-old coral atoll off the coast of Western Australia. This magnificent reef supports marine life seen nowhere else in the world. Endangered pygmy whales and other rare marine mammals depend on krill at Scott Reef for their annual migrations, but the reef sits on a vast gas reservoir known as Browse Basin. Woodside and their joint venture partners plan to drill for gas and oil beneath this unique ecosystem, seeking to sink 50 wells in the water around Scott Reef. As Tim Winton, who features in the film, said:

… Scott Reef is a sentinel. If we lose Scott Reef … we’ll have effectively lose the battle to save all the world’s clearwater corals.

The fight to save Scott Reef is about more than just this incredible place. It is about the fight to save our marine ecosystems and about our fight for a survivable climate. I thank Greenpeace, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Australian Marine Conservation Society for their contributions to our really interesting panel discussion after the film and remind the house that the Greens will never stop fighting offshore oil and gas projects, including here in Victoria.