Selling off a natural wonder for fossil fuel greed

Dredging at Gladstone Port

Gladstone Ports Corporation is undertaking the biggest dredging operation ever attempted inshore from the Great Barrier Reef, and the Australians Greens will today introduce an urgent motion into the Senate to suspend all dredging activity in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage area. This has followed widespread public condemnation of the damage caused by coal and gas development in the reef exposed by Four Corners last night.

“Nineteen thousand people have signed the GetUp! petition to save the Great Barrier Reef in less than 12 hours,” Australian Greens spokesperson for the environment Senator Larissa Waters said.

“Australians are absolutely horrified by what the coal and gas industries have been allowed to do to this international treasure.

“Twenty-seven Melbourne Cricket Grounds of dredging in Gladstone alone, hundreds of dead dugongs and turtles and epidemics of fish disease are turning the Great Barrier Reef into a wasteland, and this has all been allowed to happen by state and federal Governments.

“In my motion, the Greens will back the United Nations’ call for a strategic assessment to look at the cumulative impacts of all dredging and development activity in the World Heritage area, and will call for a suspension of all damaging activities until that assessment has been completed.

“While both Labor and the Coalition are determined to expand the risky coal seam gas industry, the Greens and Australian public will not allow our precious Reef to be turned into a coal and gas highway.

“We don’t want to be the generation that sold off one of the seven natural wonders of the world for short-term fossil fuel greed.”