Exclusive: Election-eve ban aims to cut contamination from coal and oil spills to help struggling reef

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The Queensland Labor government has banned the loading of coal ships at sea in the Great Barrier Reef marine park, following through on its 2015 election promise.

The environment minister, Steven Miles, signed off on the ban on Saturday, in response to public concerns after the environment department last month flagged allowing so-called trans-shipping in the marine park under certain rules.

The move came on the eve of Annastacia Palaszczuk calling a snap election, in which Labor’s pledge to restore bans on tree clearing will be a key point of difference in environmental policy to the Liberal National party opposition.

It followed a joint federal and state government report card on the reef showing run-off pollution to the ailing reef fell in the last year, but which did not take into account increased run-off from a surge in deforestation under LNP deregulation.

Australian Marine Conservation Society campaigner Imogen Zethoven lauded Miles “for his leadership” on the decision, which removed unwanted contamination from coal and oil spills for a reef “already under severe threat from climate change”.

“I am absolutely thrilled the government have followed through on this crucial ban,” Zethoven told the Guardian.

Great Barrier Reef: Queensland Labor may break election vow and allow ​coal ship loading Read more

The report card showed coral in the reef’s southern stretch had recovered from an unprecedented second consecutive annual bleaching event triggered by underwater heatwaves.

However, conservation groups queried the report’s claimed improvement in the overall health of the reef in the same year bleaching killed 29% of its coral.



They said Australia was not moving fast to meet some 2018 run-off reduction targets, and was not recording a rising source of run-off pollution from land clearing, which has recently surged.

Conservation groups strongly endorse the Labor government’s vow to restore clearing bans if it wins a looming state election, and have called on the LNP to prioritise the reef and drop the objections of its rural constituency.



The ban on trans-shipping in the marine area will apply to all coal ships and big vessels, including those that transfer bulk materials, such as sugar or petroleum to other ships at sea.

A consultation paper released last month proposed allowing trans-shipping off Hay Point off Mackay and three other “priority ports”, including Adani’s Abbot Point.

The proposal had appeared at odds with Labor’s promise of a ban in 2015 after the UN’s peak scientific body raised concerns about a trans-shipping proposal off Hay Point.

The consultation paper prompted thousands of responses against trans-shipping.

Zethoven said Miles’ decision on Saturday was “a huge relief”.

“I’d like to thank Minister Miles for his leadership and acting upon our real concerns today,” she said. “The risk of contaminating waters from accidental coal and oil shipment spills needed to be removed.”

The reef report card on Friday said there was an overall reduction in sediment flowing to reef waters since 2008-09.



Miles in a statement said “working farmers” had made the most effective land management practice changes to date.

The government was also trialling “gully remediation techniques, bioreactors which remove dissolved inorganic nitrogen from water, and constructed wetlands”.

“Thanks to lots of hard work on the ground, we’ve finally got pollution falling,” Miles said.



But WWF spokesman Sean Hoobin said the report did not estimate how much sediment was created by the bulldozing of more than 600,000 hectares of forest in reef catchments in that time.

This includes a recent surge since clearing controls were relaxed by the former LNP government, and which Labor tried unsuccessfully to overturn, vowing to do so in its next term of government.

Run-off can harm coral’s ability to recover from heat-induced stress, or bleaching, and reducing it is the key bipartisan commitment in Australia.

Hoobin called for future reports to included run-off impacts of forest clearing, which according to the 2017 Scientific Consensus Statement for the Great Barrier Reef “can result in a doubling of run-off”.

“Only by measuring the increased sediment caused by destroying trees can we get an accurate picture of the pollution impacting the reef,” he said.



Hoobin said climate change had also revealed a problem with the report, which focused on pollution and so had never collected data from the remote northern third of the reef.

But in 2016, underwater heatwaves caused mass coral bleaching and mortality mainly in the reef’s northern stretch.

Queensland tree clearing wipes out federal emissions gains Read more

This gives rise to the “unfortunate situation” where the report found the reef’s overall condition improved from a “D to a C in the same year that coral bleaching killed 29% of its coral”, Hoobin said.

Zethoven said the report showed Australia was not going “fast enough” to meet a UN World Heritage Committee call this year to accelerate its efforts to meet water quality targets in its Reef 2050 conservation plan.

Australia will not meet its 2018 targets to cut “sediment, agricultural fertiliser and pesticide runoff”, she said.

AMCS called on the LNP to “put politics aside and put the reef first” by backing Labor’s tougher tree clearing laws.

“64,000 jobs depend on a healthy Great Barrier Reef,” she said.