Federal Labor welcomes the news that the proposed extension of Advent Energy’s Petroleum Exploration Permit 11 (PEP-11) is finally dead in the water thanks to the NSW Government’s decision to effectively ban all offshore mining and exploration off the NSW coast.
This decision is long overdue and should have been made more than 12 months ago by the Federal Minister for Resources, Keith Pitt.
Instead, the Morrison-Joyce Government were content leaving our community in limbo despite the overwhelming opposition to the project.
Extending PEP-11 has never made sense from an economic, environmental, or energy perspective.
It would have put at risk thousands of local jobs in tourism, hospitality, and recreational and commercial fishing.
This result is a credit to our community’s advocacy, and they deserve to be congratulated.
Extraordinarily, a local Liberal candidate has admitted that the main reason the project was rejected was because Advent Energy failed to satisfy the conditions for extension, not because of the almost universal community opposition.
This implies that the Liberal Government would have granted an extension of the license if Advent Energy had satisfied the conditions.
If it wasn’t already obvious, this just proves that the Morrison-Joyce Government has never had our community’s wishes and best interests at heart on this issue.
Labor has always stood with our community and congratulates them on the successful campaign they ran to put an end to PEP-11 once and for all.