Thursday, 6 March 2025

Fossil fuel advertising

Tim READ (Brunswick) (17:29): (1057) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Public and Active Transport and Minister for Transport Infrastructure, and the action I seek is that the government ban fossil fuel advertising on public transport infrastructure in Victoria. The Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres has urged every country to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies, which he calls godfathers of climate chaos. But we do not need to wait for the federal government, we can take action in Victoria now. Councils like Merri-bek and Yarra have already taken steps to ban fossil fuel advertising on council-owned property. There is no reason we should be allowing these massive fossil fuel companies to keep pushing their dangerous products onto us at the expense of our health, our environment and our wallets.

The ABC reported last week on an organisation called InfluenceMap, which found that the global gas lobby has been running targeted pro-gas advertising campaigns tailored to different contexts around the world. Here in Victoria the gas lobby was found to be pushing messages about affordability, preying on people’s very real cost-of-living concerns just to line their own corporate pockets. Energy costs are indeed having a big impact on households, and two-thirds of Australian families have cut back on heating and cooling their homes, according to the Climate Council. Energy companies, on the other hand, are doing just fine. The Australia Institute found that $755 of an average AGL customer’s yearly energy bill goes directly to company profit. A 2023 Monash University study found that Australian homes could save $4.9 billion annually, approximately $450 per household, by electrifying. This seems like a low estimate. Daily gas supply charges alone are at least a dollar a day in Victoria.

Given the energy cost savings of switching to all-electric homes, a good government would be helping households to save money long term by supporting them to get off gas entirely. It would certainly be a more effective cost-of-living measure than the previous $250 power saving bonus, which was effectively giving government money to energy companies but with more steps involved. But many Victorians are still led to believe that renewables are more expensive than fossil fuel energy, and thanks to InfluenceMap, we can see this is a very deliberate tactic by the fossil fuel industry. We cannot let them get away with it. Let us show some initiative and ban fossil fuel advertising on public transport infrastructure in this state.