This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

A Labor senator has broken ranks with his party to vote with Liberals in support of oil and gas drilling in the Great Australian Bight, deadlocking a Senate committee investigating the proposal.

The Greens have accused the Labor party of being directly influenced by donations from oil giant Chevron. A long-awaited Senate report into the consequences of opening up the Great Australian Bight Marine National Park for oil or gas production was published on Thursday.

It made no official recommendation because the chair’s report failed to get the support of a majority of the committee’s six voting members.

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In an unusual development, Labor senator Alex Gallacher, from South Australia, voted against his two Labor colleagues, and joined forces with Liberal senators Chris Back and Linda Reynolds, to support oil and gas exploration in the Bight.

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, chair of the committee, has now accused Gallacher of being unduly influenced by Chevron’s donations to the South Australian Labor party and federal Labor party.



During the inquiry, it was revealed that Chevron, which is committed to a drilling program in the bight, had been donating money to the Labor and Liberal parties while the hearings were taking place.

Chevron donated $8,800 to the SA Labor party a week before one of the committee’s hearings in April last year, and $8,800 to the SA Liberals a day after the hearing. In 2015-16, it also donated $15,500 to federal Labor, and $11,000 to the Nationals, according to the Australian Electoral Commission.

“Chevron was recently convicted of tax shifting, moving profits offshore and avoiding Australian liabilities,” Hanson-Young said on Thursday.

“This company can’t be trusted to pay their fair share of tax, let alone treat South Australians and the environment with respect.”

When asked to respond to Hanson-Young’s accusations on Thursday, Gallacher completely denied them.

“There’s no fury like a chair scorned,” he said. “The chair didn’t have the numbers or the evidence to carry her version of the world so her next position is to put shit on people around her.

“I made my decision based on the evidence before the committee, I attended all of the hearings in both of the parliaments, and I am satisfied that the National Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority, as a world class regulator, is capable of both providing economic opportunity for South Australia and safeguards for the environment.

“I’m not in the ‘no-drill, no-exploration’ camp, which Senator Hanson-Young is, and she attempted to get that committee to agree to her position, and ultimately they didn’t, so her next position is to denigrate members of the Senate who have a different view, and I think that’s disgraceful.”

Gallacher said he was not aware of the specific amounts Chevron had donated to any political party, but he wasn’t surprised the company made political donations.

“They definitely didn’t influence my decision because I wasn’t aware of them,” he told Guardian Australia. “I don’t care who donates to the Labor party or not. I’m a senator for South Australia who makes decisions based on evidence, and I’m not frightened to take my own party on if I think they’re wrong.

“In this instance, I think the best decision for South Australia is to pursue exploration with the independent regulator clearly doing an excellent job.”

When asked why his Labor colleagues had voted differently, he said someone would have to ask them.



“I’m a South Australian senator. The economic opportunity for South Australia [from drilling in the bight] is immense,” Gallacher said.

“This project is capable of drilling 7,000 jobs for the Australian economy, I believe the safeguards are in place.”

Labor senators Anthony Chisholm (Queensland) and Anne Urquhart (Tasmania) did not say in the report that drilling in the Bight should not go ahead. Instead, they recommended a mandatory period of public comment during the final assessment process for environment plans.

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Gallacher, Back and Reynolds said in the report: “We support oil and gas exploration in the Great Australian Bight subject to continued strong oversight by [the regulator].”

Hanson-Young said in the report: “The Australian Greens recommend that no further oil or gas exploration or production be permitted in the Great Australian Bight marine national park.”

South Australian senator Nick Xenophon, who is a participating member of the committee with no voting rights, said in the report: “Drilling in the Great Australian Bight should not proceed as it fails to meet the burden of proof required by the precautionary principle.”

Greenpeace senior campaigner Nathaniel Pelle said Australia’s politicians were putting oil company profits before the environment and community.

“It’s astonishing that the only independent experts involved in this inquiry have condemned oil company plans as falling short of global best practice and yet the response from some Senators is to rubber-stamp them,” Pelle said.

“These politicians are putting blind faith in an accident-prone oil industry and a regulatory body that has already failed to hold polluters to account.”