Bass Coast Shire Council in south-east Victoria wants the federal government to charge big polluters to help councils and communities recover from environmental disasters. The council says fossil fuel companies should be held partly responsible for extreme weather events. The Bass Coast Shire Council will write to Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen asking for the government to impose a levy on fossil fuel companies, with the funds raised to help communities recover from extreme weather events. According to a Climate Council report released this year found annual disaster costs per Australian had increased by 200 per cent since the 1980s. State and federal governments have poured $9 million into protecting coastal towns in Bass Coast. “We’ve got kilometres and kilometres of coast. So much of our housing [is] built on coastal communities that we are walking into an absolutely existential crisis for some of these regional towns and councils” Bass Councillor Morgan pictured below.

A coastal council in Victoria’s south-east is calling for the federal government to make big polluters pay for climate-related damages. Inverloch’s surf lifesaving club was built in 2010 and, due to erosion, is now protected from incoming tides by sandbags.

Measures such as wet sand walls have helped to protect the town’s shoreline, and a dredger is now used to move sand from a nearby inlet to the surf beach.. Victoria’s Bass Coast has been affected by worsening storms and coastal erosion for more than a decade. In the tourist town of Inverloch, more than 70 metres of foreshore at the surf beach has been lost to erosion since 2012.

Councillor Mat Morgan, also a Greens candidate at the upcoming Victorian election, put the motion to council at a meeting last month.

Councillors voted to approve the motion, five votes to four.

“Australians should be getting a fair share of the returns from the resources that belong to us, and we should use that money to pay for climate damage.”

“We give away the majority of our gas for free, and we’re exporting it overseas,” Cr Morgan said.