QRC: Reef TV Campaign Achieves Great Results (Australia)

The Queensland Resources Council’s Reef Facts television advertising campaign has resulted in thousands more Australians learning about current and future management challenges for the Great Barrier Reef.

Chief Executive Michael Roche said today this initial television advertising campaign would wind up this evening, having achieved its objective.

“This campaign was about encouraging factual inquiry so that people could satisfy themselves about documented threats to the health of the reef and learn what is being done by governments, industries and communities in response,” he said.

“Since the start of the campaign, there has been a three-fold increase in visits to the Queensland Government’s Reef Facts website with thousands more visitors to the QRC’s Working Alongside the Great Barrier Reef site.

“However, we expect the campaign by environmental activists holding the Great Barrier Reef as an emotional hostage will continue.

“They have made it clear that their goal is to shut down Queensland’s export coal and gas industries, regardless of the costs to the nation, the state and more than a million people living in communities from Bundaberg to Cape York.”

Mr Roche also hoped the television campaign had been successful in encouraging the media and communities to more closely scrutinise activist claims, particularly following the publication of a peer-reviewed study of environmental impacts from port dredging projects in northern Australia.

“Dredging and seabed relocation of sediment continues to be misrepresented as an environmental threat when this expert, peer-reviewed report confirms that recent placements in subtropical and tropical Australian ports have either met their rigorous environmental conditions or exceeded expectations,” he said.

“All we are advocating is that people genuinely interested in the future of the Great Barrier Reef put their faith in science over ice cream marketing stunts.

“The TV campaign may be over for now but the message remains the same – no dredging of coral reefs and no disposal of dredge spoil on coral reefs or other environmentally sensitive areas,” Mr Roche said.

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Press Release, May 12, 2014