Shorten world heritage plan risked a billion-dollar Bight

It would have paved the way for commercial fishing restrictions and ended plans to develop oil and gas reserves worth billions to the economy.

Former Australian opposition Leader Bill Shorten at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: AAP

Bill Shorten was reserving the ­option of declaring the Great Australian Bight a World Heritage Site if he won government, which would have paved the way for commercial fishing restrictions and ended plans to develop oil and gas reserves worth billions to the economy.

The Weekend Australian can reveal that Mr Shorten and his senior leadership team discussed going to the May 18 election proclaiming the Great Australia Bight as a World Heritage Site, in a series of crisis meetings over the last fortnight of the campaign as strategists feared Labor was going backwards in the Victorian seat of Corangamite.

The proposal was mulled over in three conference calls at the back-end of the campaign, but Mr Shorten eventually decided there was not enough time to consider all ramifications before the poll.

A spokesman for Mr Shorten confirmed the former Labor leader was open to the proposal but ­decided against making a rushed decision during the campaign.

The conference calls were held in response to a briefing of key seats by then assistant national secretary Paul Erickson, with the notionally Labor seat considered “line-ball” amid a campaign against drilling in the Bight by the Greens and an independent can­didate, Damien Cole.

The policy being considered was for a federal Labor government to lobby the UN to put the Bight on its international heritage list, which is the position of the Greens and Centre Alliance.

Included in the discussions were senior Labor MPs Tanya Plibersek, Chris Bowen, Mark ­Butler, Tony Burke, Don Farrell and Jason Clare.

Senator Farrell and Mr Clare were understood to be against proposals that would put a blanket ban on resource development in the basin on the south coast of Australia.

A source involved in the discussions said, however, that most of the leadership group were supportive of the idea, with one senior Labor figure expecting the issue to have been revisited if Labor had won the election on May 18.

“That is the way we were going,” the source said.

A study sponsored by the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association has claimed that developing the Bight could add $5.8bn to gross domestic product every year.

Mr Shorten announced 10 days before the election that Labor would initiate a scientific study into the potential impact of an oil spill from drilling in the Bight, with the policy copied by the ­Coalition.

The Norwegian oil company Equinor intends to drill exploration wells and open up oil ­reserves in the Bight next year, but it is yet to secure environmental approvals.

University of Melbourne dir­ector of environment programs David Kennedy said a World Heritage listing would prevent oil and gas exploration in the Bight.

Associate Professor Kennedy also said the measure could reduce commercial fishing in the waters, which cover the coast of South Australia, as well as parts of ­Western Australia, Victoria and Tasmania.

“We are really looking at nat­ural resource extraction, whether it is plants and animals or oil,” Professor Kennedy said.

“It will have a very positive ­impact in protecting marine bio­diversity, the land forms and all those associated elements.”

Labor MP Libby Coker won the seat of Corangamite from its ­former Liberal representative, Sarah Henderson.

A redistribution of the its boundaries had made Coran­gamite a notionally Labor-held seat, by a slender margin of 0.03 per cent.