Budget blowouts and bankruptcy: Why this Gippsland council wants big polluters to pay up

Bass Coast Shire councillor Mat Morgan is acutely aware of the risks posed to coastal towns by extreme weather and rising tides.

The 27-year old councillor lives in Inverloch, 300 metres from the sandbag wall that was built to protect the surf life saving club from falling into the ocean.

Morgan told the Monitor he is worried that the rising costs of saving coastal towns, buildings and infrastructure from water inundation is going to end up bankrupting local governments.

“In Inverloch, with the dredging and the sandbag wall, [governments are] spending millions and millions of dollars to save one town. If you multiply that by every coastal town across Australia, just think how big that bill will be. It's just unrealistic.”

In March, work on a new 110-metre sandbag wall to protect the coastline was completed. 

• Since 2019, over $2 million in funding has been provided to Bass Coast Shire through state government grants to protect Inverloch. 

What happened: At a council meeting in April, Morgan moved a motion to call on fossil fuel companies to foot the bill for climate impacts that are endangering Bass Coast Shire communities.

Morgan said the council consistently receives petitions “campaigning for all sorts of climate mitigation measures from a local government that has a $100 million [annual] budget”.

In the four years before the 2024/25 financial year, Bass Coast Shire spent approximately $150,000 annually on its Coastal Risk Management Program, $61,000 of which was for works at Inverloch. 

In 2024/25, the shire’s expenditure on Inverloch Surf Beach rose to $330,000.

“No local government will ever have the funds to address the climate issues that are going to pop up as the climate crisis intensifies,” Morgan said. “What we need is for the people who have caused this crisis to front up and pay for the damage they've caused.”

The growing cost

Australia’s National Climate Risk Assessment, released in September last year, warned that there are 1.5 million people in low-lying coastal communities that will be at high risk of coastal flooding and erosion by 2050.

“We're talking about places like Inverloch, Silverleaves, Cowes, Grantville,” Morgan said. “Then you go over to towns in South Gippsland; Sandy Point, Tarwin Lower and Venus Bay. These places are all at extreme risk of inundation, and the government doesn't have a plan for buybacks.”

• What are property buybacks? A voluntary government program where homeowners in flood-prone areas sell their homes to the government at pre-flood market value.

The vote

The council passed the motion five votes to four. Bass Coast Shire will now write to the Federal Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, arguing for a levy on large fossil fuel companies to support local governments dealing with extreme weather and coastal inundation.