Greens candidate John Mackenzie led a snap protest action at Bar Beach Saturday declaring Newcastle would never accept offshore gas exploration off the Hunter coast.
Mr Mackenzie, a Newcastle councillor who won preselection for the Greens in November, described the proposal to explore for offshore gas along the Hunter coast as "extraordinary" and "monstrous" at the weekend, and demanded his state and federal political counterparts listen to the objections of the electorate against extending an energy company's expired permit to do so.
Asset Energy has proposed to investigate the viability of around 4500 square kilometres of mostly Commonwealth waters between Newcastle and Wollongong for delivering commercial quantities of natural gas it says it would provide to the domestic market as a so-called "transition fuel" toward a renewable energy future.
In 2021, the company applied to extend its permit, known as PEP-11, which would allow it to explore for gas off the region's coast after it expired in February that year. The application, and former prime minister Scott Morrison's sensational blocking of the permit extension, to the blindsided surprise of his own Energy Minister, became the focus of a widely publicised Federal Court action which ultimately quashed Mr Morrison's ruling this month.
Now, despite vociferous community objection and virtually unanimous similar sentiments across state political lines, Asset Energy's plan to extend PEP-11 looks set to go back to consultation as the new Labor federal government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, vacated its court battle brought by the energy company essentially opening the door to hearing out the proposal again, notwithstanding Mr Albanese's vocal denouncement of PEP-11 during the last federal election campaign.
This week, the Newcastle Herald reported federal Energy Minister Madeleine King's office said it had a responsibility for regulating oil and gas around the country and that all regulatory decisions taken on offshore petroleum titles needed to be fair, constitutionally valid and in accordance with proper processes.
While the state parliament would have the authority to legislate on issues impacting its own coastal waters after the election next month, the federal government has indicated through Ms King's office that it would not provide ongoing commentary on PEP-11 as it pertains to Commonwealth controlled waters in order to protect the future decision-making processes.
"The Australian Government has a longstanding legislative regime through the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act (2006) which allows for decisions to be made on offshore petroleum titles," a spokesperson for Ms King said Wednesday.
The potential revival of PEP-11 has led some to describe it as a "zombie" project.
"It looks dead, it smells dead, you think its dead, but then somehow it rises again and relaunches itself with the same sort of mindless destruction as when it first appeared," Mr Mackenzie said at the weekend, adding that "this project has no social license; it will never be accepted in the community and we will never see our pristine coastline turned into a gas field."
Mr Mackenzie was campaigning with Greens MP Cate Faehrmann who holds the NSW party's climate policy portfolio, among others, and both she and Mr Mackenzie said their political counterparts needed to make it clear they would stand against the proposal as it emerged again.
Earlier in the week, the NSW Liberal-National Coalition pledged to ban offshore gas exploration from state waters if elected, and Newcastle Labor MP Tim Crakanthorp said his party colleagues in the Hunter would object to the proposal describing his position Saturday as "no from the word 'Go'".
"We're against it," Mr Crakanthorp said, "All the Hunter MPs are dead against it ... which we have been for many, many years. No means no."
On the Federal level, however, Mr Crakanthorp described the court battle between the government and Asset Energy over Mr Morrison's block was a "process issue" and that "when it came to the crunch, (the energy company) would have won that court case and cost the government a lot of money". Labor ultimately abandoned the case and committed to repeating the consultation to, as Mr Crakanthorp said, "do it properly".
Ms Faehrmann, however, warned the community could not trust Labor's objection to the project and said the party needed to declare its intentions definitively.
"We need a definitive statement from Madeleine King and Anthony Albanese that they are opposed to the project," Mr Mackenzie said. "What they have done so far is say that they will follow some sort of process which exists in the minds of the bureaucrats and themselves.
"Why put the community through the anxiety and uncertainty of not knowing whether this project will go ahead or not?
"If they are against it, they need to be clear, unequivocal and outright and say this project will not go ahead under this government and the state parties need to back that in as well."
