2025-06-26
North west shelf: Explained
By Larissa Waters, Leader of the Australian Greens
I’ve spent my career fighting for nature and climate action. The past few weeks have made it clear that the moment for real action on climate is now.
Less than a month after winning a landslide election over the Coalition, the Albanese Labor government approved Woodside's North West shelf gas extension to 2070.
45 more years.
This approval will generate up to 6.1 billion tonnes of emissions over its lifetime and threaten to push whole ecosystems to the brink of collapse.
This was a betrayal and a disastrous decision for the future of our planet. Our new Environment Minister Murray Watt has failed his first test in the job – killing the prospect of Australia achieving net zero by 2050.
In a time where we have been living through a once-in-a-decade weather event almost every year, this approval will mean more intense floods, fires and species extinctions, plus more pollution each year than all of Australia’s coal stations combined.
We have known for years that the climate crisis is already happening. 2024 was the hottest year on record. Put simply: new coal and gas projects will make things worse.
But Labor went ahead and approved this anyway.
To add insult to injury, the public won’t even see any economic benefits – just worsened climate disasters – because Woodside will pay virtually no gas tax. Most of the gas gets shipped overseas, so the only winners are their corporate profits.
This extension endangers the sacred Murujuga rock art that includes the earliest depiction of the human face on the planet. And it puts pressure on beautiful Scott Reef and on the Kimberley for new fracking sites to feed this hungry gas plant.
Voters believed Labor when they said they’d take real action on the climate crisis. They didn’t vote for Woodside’s carbon bomb. They deserve a moratorium on new coal and gas projects, and full transparency on those mysterious North West Shelf approval conditions—now.
This decision demonstrates just how broken our environment laws are — and how much work there is to do in this new parliament, where we head back to in just a few weeks.
With the balance of power in the Senate, we have an opportunity to hold the government to account and to push for a better way forward.
The government has a choice this term: to work with the Greens in the Senate to legislate a climate trigger so dirty fossil fuel projects are properly assessed for their impacts (and then to reject those applications!), or to continue approving toxic coal and gas that sends our planet to collapse.
As we head back to parliament, the Greens will be firm, constructive and unrelenting in our push for real climate action – and protection for nature and our environment.
I know it feels very hard to see a path forward, but I believe this is a moment for all of us together to respond with hope, courage and persistence.
My kids and yours deserve a safe climate future, so do we, and so do all the precious species we share this beautiful planet with.
The world needs us to keep showing up and fighting.
I’m so proud and inspired by everyone who has already spoken up across the country in the last few weeks. People have rallied together against this latest climate bomb approval.
And we will continue to talk with our family and friends about what this means for our future, to call our local MPs, to organise in our communities, and to make our voices heard. With a snap election in Tasmania in a matter of weeks, and South Australia and Victoria over the next 18 months, we can pressure Labor at the ballot box too.
During the last term of parliament, Labor approved over 30 new coal and gas projects. It doesn’t look like they’re slowing down any time soon. Just like the Liberals, they take political donations from fossil fuel companies – and it clouds their judgement.
Labor’s decision to delay their approval of the dirtiest gas project in Australia’s history until after the election is proof that they’re still on the payroll of the big gas corporations.
The Greens are the only party with a science-backed plan for a safe climate future.
My promise to you is that the Greens will keep fighting for climate and the environment, a transition to clean energy, an end to native forest logging, protection for our biodiversity, and no more coal and gas.