Patagonia

This submission process wasn’t simply a petition, with a ticked box. NOPSEMA have created guidelines around public submissions that required the public to directly address TGS’s environment plan – a 1400-page document of dense science and dubious claims. “The system is wrong. Thirty days was not enough time,” offers Annie bluntly. “We asked for a formal extension and were knocked back. There were huge holes in their science. It was all cherry picked and parts of it were an absolute joke. To expect the public to scrutinise this in just 30 days is just wrong and the process itself needs to change.”

There were some really brazen aspects to TGS’s plan. “For example, they're blasting over two marine parks. They're blasting in a whale sanctuary. They're blasting in the Bonney Upwelling, a driving engine for our ocean ecosystems. It's literally legislated as a biologically important area for blue whales and for right whales. It’s one of the only places on the planet these species breed, and feed and these guys want to blast it. There's no way around the huge holes and problems with this proposal.”

But the huge public response does not guarantee NOPSEMA will knock TSG back. Their decision is technical, not political, nor social. From here, NOPSEMA will either approve TSG’s plan, or reject it on technical or environmental grounds and send it back to TSG to amend. “We need to keep in mind that if they reject the plan and ask TSG to change and resubmit it, we don't get a second chance at commenting,” says Annie. “We had our one chance. This is a great stepping-stone, but it's not the end.”

Beyond technical and environmental arguments however, the sheer volume of public submissions here sends a message to politicians and the gas industry that there is little-to-no social license in regard to this project… and by extension to any further gas development in the Otway Basin.

“We have every hope in the world of knocking this over… and not only knocking it over but using this as an example to any company that wants to come into our waters and blast in sensitive, biologically important areas. It sends a very clear message to companies, to our government and to industry that what has been going on behind closed doors is not okay. We can see them. We know that this is happening and it's not okay.”

Annie knows however that campaigns like these are long games, and that fossil fuel giants don’t back down when there’s a sniff of a profit sitting out there, somewhere. But for now, it’s a huge statement. “It’s a massive, massive win for the environment today, and it's given us a lot of hope going into summer. Stay tuned.”