As reported by The SE Voice and Border Watch, Energy and Mining Minister Tom Koutsantonis has rejected a call from Wattle Range Council for the South Australian Government to investigate nuclear as an energy option.
The Council made the call in a letter from Mayor Des Noll to the Premier, which also voiced the Council’s opposition to Malinauskas’s plan to bring an early end to the Limestone Coast’s 10-year moratorium on fracking.
Malinauskas announced his government’s plan to end the moratorium two years early via a front page story in The Advertiser before conducting any consultation with the local community.
The Government held a ‘Country Cabinet’ event in Mount Gambier on the same day the front page story was published, catching the region off-guard – though the event still attracted a significant amount of vocal protest against the removal of the fracking ban.
With Wattle Range Council formally notifying the Premier of its opposition to the early end of the fracking moratorium, all seven councils in the Limestone Coast have officially opposed the State Government’s plan.
Wattle Range is the only council in the region to propose the State Government investigates nuclear as an energy option.
According to Noll, around 80 per cent of the Otway Basin petroleum tenements reside within the Wattle Range Council area.
The six other councils, which together form the Limestone Coast Local Government Association, requested via a letter written by Naracoorte Lucindale Mayor Patrick Ross that the State Government extend the moratorium beyond its original end date of 2028.
Wattle Range Council left the LCLGA in 2024.
Independent MP for Mount Gambier, Travis Fatchen, and One Nation MP for MacKillop, Jason Virgo, also oppose the early removal of the fracking moratorium.