Climate-200 independent Kylea Tink ditches fossil fuel shares

MP for North Sydney Kylea Tink poses for a photograph with her supporters at Jeffrey Street Wharf in May. Image: AAP/ Bianca De Marchi.

Climate-200 independent Kylea Tink appears to have abandoned her campaign to drive change from within two fossil fuel companies, declaring that she no longer owns shares in the oil and gas entities barely weeks after publicly defending her position.

Margin Call revealed a fortnight ago that the Teal independent had declared ownership of shares in Beach Energy, an oil and gas explorer, and Viva Energy Group, which owns a Geelong refinery and retails Shell-branded fuels across the country.

In a notification altering her disclosures, processed on Friday, Tink declared that she had jettisoned shares in the two companies, as well as shares in Sonic Healthcare, Transurban and a Charter Hall Social Infrastructure REIT.

The North Sydney independent campaigned hard during the election on a platform of helping to clean up the planet. Last year she railed against the Australian government for erecting a pavilion at the COP26 climate talks sponsored by a fossil fuel company.

She has also been pressing the Albanese government to legislate fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles. In April she tweeted: “Fossil fuel producers need to find other forms of energy if they want to stay in business.”

Once her shareholdings in the fossil fuel companies were revealed, Tink offered a defence of her position, claiming that she could “better understand the entities” by holding a minuscule number of shares and “potentially exert pressure from within to drive reform”.
Tink told Margin Call the shares were purchased in February 2021, months before she had been approached to stand as a candidate for the North Sydney electorate.

Once elected, however, she said her ability to conduct any shareholder activism as intended was lost among the other priorities of being an MP.

“Do I wish I’d done more with them? Yes... Do I regret holding them? No, because we all have a responsibility to do whatever we can to bring the world to a better position as we face climate change,” she said.

“As a parliamentarian I have another channel to exert influence and that’s with the presentation of legislation in the house, and that’s why I’m excited to table my private members bill to introduce a requirement for fuel efficiency in our country.

“That’s where I’ll be making sure I continue to fight for whatever initiatives I can to get faster action on climate.”