Petrol prices up as Adelaide council rejects fossil fuel ads
As war in the Middle East sends fuel prices skyrocketing throughout the state, one council has voted to dump advertising from the fossil fuel industry. Growing numbers are looking to follow suit.
The City of Onkaparinga passed a motion on Tuesday evening banning new fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship on council-owned land.
Onkaparinga councillor Marion Themeliotis introduced the successful motion calling on the council “to avoid entering into new advertising or sponsorship arrangements on council-owned or controlled property with companies whose primary business is the extraction or sale of coal, oil or gas”.
A growing number of councils are considering similar moves after a campaign spearheaded by the Conservation Council of South Australia and climate advocacy group Comms Declare.
The City of Mitcham voted in favour of the same move in September 2023, while the Adelaide Hills Council voted against a similar motion in February this year – but would still send a letter to the state government calling for it to drop gas company Santos’s name from the Tour Down Under.
Conservation Council SA CEO Kirsty Bevan said Tuesday evening’s vote was “a really positive step in the right direction”.
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“What we’re trying to do is say we’ve all got our climate targets … and it seems counterintuitive to be doing that whilst at the same time, promoting the companies that are releasing these greenhouse gases that are causing climate change,” she said.
Bevan said the Conservation Council was calling for the long-term transition away from fossil fuels.
“We know that there are current resource requirements, which means we’re not ready to transition, which is why we’re really calling for that long-term transition plan to be set.”
“We think that we have a role globally to be leading in terms of how we do that, for nature-positive outcomes and to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases and climate-causing pollution that we’re putting out.”
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Conservation Council nature campaigner Darcey McNamara, who has led the charge on this issue, said that “it’s about deciding what kinds of industries we allow to be promoted in public spaces that we all share and it’s about councils showing leadership in that”.
“We all know that fossil fuels are the number one contributor to climate change, and community members are growing increasingly concerned about the way that they are promoted.”
It comes as fuel prices skyrocketed across the state due to conflict in the Middle East, with Unleaded 91 prices ranging from 226.7 to 249.9 cents per litre this morning, while diesel was costing 269.9 to 300 cents per litre.
According to the ABC, police data showed 221 fuel thefts across SA last week, but Police Commissioner Grant Stevens said it was not a priority for SAPOL.
“This takes police away from other responsibilities that we could be attending to, so we are calling on the retail fuel industry to take positive steps to prevent this virtually overnight by implementing pre-paid, which is something they have within their capacity to do,” he said.
The prime minister will hold a national cabinet meeting of premiers and chief ministers today to discuss fuel shortages in regional communities.
Following a fuel roundtable on fuel prices on Monday, Premier Peter Malinauskas said that policy for fuel security is “exclusively the domain of the Commonwealth”.
“As a state government, we can act as a facilitator, we can act as an advocate, and we can act as a sharer of information between industry and the federal government themselves,” he said.
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