Category: Activism

Around 150 people gathered outside the Adelaide Convention Centre to ‘welcome’ delegates to the Annual General Meeting of the oil and gas company Santos. Marc Hudson investigates.

The Adelaide Convention Centre sits on North Terrace. The only thing between it and the South Australian parliament is a railway station. I mention this because in September 1977 there was an election for the right to sit in that parliament. During that election questions of mining, and energy, were high on the agenda.

One party – we will come back to which – had the following as its policy statement on this.

Fast-forward 49 years and Santos, (an acronym for South Australia and Northern Territory Oil Search) the oil and gas company that some say has a disproportionate influence on South Australia’s politics, is holding its Annual General Meeting.  Around 200 people gathered for a protest rally organised by a group of environmental and social justice organisations including the Australian Conservation Foundation, Action Aid and the Conservation Council of South Australia.

Under the watchful (and occasionally baleful) eye of plentiful South Australian police, delegates and protestors shared the same escalator up to the entrance of the convention centre. 

Four protestors, in mock business suits, were on the pavement at the foot of the escalator.

All held signs and one, Ian, from Extinction Rebellion, chomped on a cigar. He explained the purpose of the protest –

“We’re here because Santos is the biggest company in South Australia. They’re having their AGM today. The shareholders will be here, and they are running programmes, projects around the country and overseas that are impacting the environment, that are impacting and overriding the rights of indigenous people. If anybody stands in front of them, they will take them to court. They’ve constantly taken indigenous people to court, and they keep appealing any decisions they lose. So we’re here to call them out. We’re here to support the First Nations people, but we’re also letting the public know that we believe Santos pays no tax. Hasn’t paid business tax for last 10 years. They pay very little money in donations to the government, and they always get what they want from government.”

(full interview transcript at the foot of this post]

Up the escalator, on the plaza outside the entrance the Convention Centre (the inevitable vast panes of glass – the banal calling card of global corporate architecture), thronged various people with placards and t-shirts bearing blunt messages (not all of them entirely safe for work). Various TV and print journalists scurried around, with police ‘liaison’ officers mingling too.  (See InDaily’s report here).

There was a brief welcome to country, delivered first in a First Nations language and then in English – “Because we all family, right? Yeah, happy together. I’m strong like the ground, like the country, and we’re soft like water too. So I bring you all here in the spirit of humanity. That’s my mom’s words.”

The speeches  at the rally were necessarily brief, (and there was a telling absence from the line-up, of which more later).

The MC (who did well!) was at pains to get all those present to be aware of – and repeat out loud, twice – the fact that the speakers from today’s rally would be at an event – No New Gas! Q&A with Frontline Traditional Owners and Adam Bandt – Conservation Council SA – tomorrow (Friday 17^th April) at the Lion Arts Factory, 68 North Terrace, from 5.00pm, where more detail would be delivered, and more ways to be involved in the various campaigns.

Adam Bandt, formerly a member of parliament for the Australian Greens, and now CEO of the Australian Conservation Foundation, kept his remarks brief. Gas, he said, is as dirty as coal (this in response to the messaging – pushed by Santos and many others, that gas is somehow a ‘transition’ fuel). He said that gas was driving the climate crisis and pointed (as did a later speaker) to the algal bloom that is wreaking havoc on the wildlife in the oceans of South Australia (and on the livelihoods of those who rely on fishing, tourism etc). Bandt pointed to the hotter summers and ever more sever heatwaves, to waters sources being under threat.  He concluded his remarks by saying that Australia has solar and wind sources that are the envy of other nations, that governments don’t go to war over solar and wind and that Australia should be aiming for energy independence. He also, – and this will not have endeared him to the delegates – proposed healthy taxation of Santos’s profits.

Next up was Uncle Jack Green, of the Northern Territory, where he and his kin have been confronting the Mcarthur River Mine.  His comments were brief, but compelling. He reminded those present that the mines threaten the water, and that “we live on that water – doesn’t matter who you are, cattle, human, kangaroo.”

The next speaker was Kara Kinchella (sp?), whom I believe (will correct if wrong) of the Gomeroi traditional owners from New South Wales. A coalition of groups, made up of  Gomeroi Traditional Owners, NSW Farmers, the Country Women’s Association of NSW, Unions NSW and the Lock the Gate Alliance, have created the Breeza Declaration. (can’t find online, but this is the closest I got)

Her takeaway message – “we need to get angry, before it’s too late.”

The penultimate speaker (it was clear that the event had started late, and the rally would therefore be somewhat truncated)  was Joseph, from Papua New Guinea, where both Santos and the French company Total have operations. Total has managed to get permission – and here Jospeh quoted from a newspaper article ‘to discharge waste into the environment’. As he pointed out, the waste kills the fish, the prawns and poisons the land – this is a human rights abuse issue. He got a full-throated cheer from the crowd for his suggestion that “if it’s safe, take all the waste and dump it in Paris, at the Eiffel Tower.”  He closed saying “Santos, you are responsible, don’t do this.”

There was a short break for a group photo, and to send the various delegates into the AGM to ask their questions. The final speaker was Kirsty Bevan, of the Conservation Council of South Australia. 

She said she is often asked “why South Australia?” (with, I think, the implication in the question being that SA is a backwater and people here have the luxury of thinking that nothing they do matters) She said that she always replies that Santos has its HQ here, but also, beyond this, there problem is not one for the future but rather one of the

“crises that we’re seeing play out in front of us. It’s not a future problem, it’s a now problem, and we’re seeing extreme weather events. Our surface water temperatures in the ocean have risen by 2.5 degrees, well above the normal, which is what has resulted in the algal bloom, which we’re entering our second year.” (you can read the full transcript at the foot of this post.)

Earlier I alluded to a missing speaker.  So, who was absent from the line-up?  Well, this is NOT a criticism of the organisers, merely a reflection of the reality we live in – where were the union figures willing and able to speak out on the dangers of continued extraction of oil, coal and gas?  There have always been tensions – sometimes managed well, sometimes not – between organised labour and environmental movements. There have been Green Bans, environmentally-inspired pushes for Full Employment, dreams of a “Green Gold Rush” around “green jobs” and climate jobs” (something Australian Conservation Foundation pushed in the early 1990s and late 2000s respectively – the second time with the peak body for Australian Trades Unions).  But today, for whatever reason, no union rep was to be heard.

In 1977 Australia was in the midst of a debate about uranium mining and the export of uranium to countries with nuclear reactors. There was then (as there is now) talk of nuclear power for Australia. Which party had that manifesto commitment? It wasn’t the Greens – they would not exist until the early 1990s, brought into existence from one-betrayal-too-many from the Australian Labor Party. It wasn’t Labor. It wasn’t the Liberals (though there were Liberal figures pushing for renewables research and development.) Reader, it was the National Country Party, now known as the Nationals.

In 1977 the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stood at roughly 333 parts per million.  Carbon dioxide traps heat on the earth’s surface. The more there is in the air, the more heat is trapped. Today, in 2026, the CO2 levels are at almost 100ppm above that –  430ppm. They are climbing faster and faster each year. More heat is trapped. More consequences for our past inaction – stretching back long before 1977 – pile up for present and future generations.

My two cents:  There really is only so much you can do to innovate with the format of a rally like this, especially when time is tight. Tomorrow afternoon, at the Lion Arts Theatre, it will be easier to see if there is the kind of innovation in how activists hold events that is desperately required.  Watch this space.

Further reading

Adelaide University considers dropping Santos name – News | InDaily, Inside South Australia

Royce Kurmelovs Slick Australia’s toxic relationship with Big Oil k

Transcript of interview with Extinction Rebellion person.

Marc – It’s 16th of April, 2026, I’m outside the Convention Centre. I’m talking to two men in business suits “representing” Santos. One of them has a cigar, as per photo. You’re from extinction rebellion. Why are you here today?

Ian – We’re here because Santos is the biggest company in South Australia. They’re having their AGM today. The shareholders will be here, and they are running programmes, projects around the country and overseas that are impacting the environment, that are impacting and overriding the rights of indigenous people. If anybody stands in front of them, they will take them to court. They’ve constantly taken indigenous people to court, and they keep appealing any decisions they lose. So we’re here to call them out. We’re here to support the First Nations people, but we’re also letting the public know that we believe Santos pays no tax. Hasn’t paid business tax for last 10 years. They pay very little money in donations to the government, and they always get what they want from government.

Marc – And what next for after today? How does the campaign against what Santos is doing continue?

Ian – Okay, in May, we have the Australian Energy Producers conference here in Adelaide that is the lobby group for the oil and gas industry in Australia. All the CEOs will be here, and government ministers will be here. They’ll be here for four days. So we’ll be here to disrupt them.

Marc – I seem to recall, at the last AEP meeting in Adelaide two or three years ago, there were protests that ended up with the Malinauskus government changing the laws. Any comment?

Ian -We’ll do whatever we have to do. We’ll keep doing it because they are not changing. The government is going down the path that Santos tells them to go down, and we’ll keep resisting.

Transcript of rest of Kirsty Bevan speech

It is so important that South Australians stand up and declare that we are not responsible for the climate crisis. As individuals, there are organisations and there are companies who are contributing every day to an accelerated changing climate, whether they’re digging that gas out of the ground which releases greenhouse gases, whether they’re burning it to turn it into liquid gas to export it overseas, they are releasing greenhouse gases which are all contributing to the climate crisis. This part is not under question.

So what do we do? We get them to pay, not the South Australian public. We get them to play for the crisis that’s resulting and our algal bloom, which the report we did at the Conservation Council, we submitted a report that showed that in the first 12 months conservatively, the economic impact of the bloom was around 250 million that’s a quarter of a billion dollars. And who bears the cost of that? We do.

Our role here in South Australia is so important, and we need two fronts at the federal level. We need to show that we are united and that they have a strong voice, that the federal government needs to stop any future expansions of gas and in South Australia, we need to make a firm stand to say that Santos is not a household name. We need to stop promoting Santos at our climate friendly events like the Tour Down Under. We need to stop promoting Santos in our universities and on public land, and we need to stand together to show that we won’t stand for it.

And the government needs to make a change. You can all join up to the Conservation Council’s programme. There’s some people around with their placards out, their hands up, come sign your name, be a part. Showing up to these events is what makes it really matter. But we will continue to hold the government to account. And I thank every single person here today for coming out. Thank you”