King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Jimmy Barnes and Fred Leone are among the artists on If Not Now, a campaign song against Woodside’s gas plans at Scott Reef.
Scott Reef has never played a gig, but as of 9 November it has a debut single, If Not Now.
Stu Mackenzie wrote King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s If Not Now, Then When? after the Black Summer bushfires, and it won the inaugural Environmental Music Prize in 2022. If Not Now pulls that song apart and rebuilds it as a campaign record. Greenpeace Australia Pacific, Green Music Australia and p(doom) Records, the band’s own label, released it to oppose Woodside’s plan to drill up to 57 gas wells under and around Scott Reef, a 15-million-year-old coral reef 270 kilometres off the Kimberley coast.
If Not Now by Scott Reef
- Released 9 November
- Streaming on all digital platforms
- Limited edition seven-inch vinyl via p(doom) Records
- Artwork and visualiser by Jonathan Zawada
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Mackenzie produced the new version with Tim Shiel, the former triple j and Double J presenter who is now lead campaigner at Green Music Australia. The pair kept the original’s clavinet and falsetto and built outwards. FVNERAL’s Tay Blunt engineered vocals at a secret session during BIGSOUND 2026, with Ngaiire and King Gizzard in the room. Becki Whitton mastered it.
Three generations and two First Languages
Jimmy Barnes sings alongside his daughter Mahalia Barnes and his granddaughter Ruby Rodgers, who won the Environmental Music Prize earlier this year with Hits the Heart. Fred Leone, a Butchulla songman who shared Artist of the Year with his cousin Birdz at the National Indigenous Music Awards in August, sings his part in Butchulla. Terry Guyula from Drifting Clouds, Best New Talent winners at the same awards, translates the chorus into Yolŋu Matha. John Butler and Spacey Jane’s Peppa Lane hold up the WA end, joined by Djugun and Jabirr-Jabirr singer-songwriter NIDALA and teenage triplets Birdland.
Gordi, Montaigne, Alex Lahey and Leah Senior all turn up. Ngaiire adds ad-libs and Close Counters lay down synths. DOBBY and Urthboy split the rap verse. Tom Mahler from Central Coast band The Moving Stills features too, and marine biologist and freediver Brinkley Davies gets her say through a sample from the Scott Reef documentary Coral’s Last Stand.
A decision on Murray Watt’s desk
The Browse gas field lies directly beneath Scott Reef, and Woodside needs federal approval to develop it. Environment Minister Murray Watt is expected to make that call in the coming months. Greenpeace says more than half a million people have joined its campaign against the drilling, and it points to the wildlife: endangered pygmy blue whales feed around the reef, and Sandy Islet on South Scott Reef is one of two nesting sites for a genetically distinct green turtle population. In October, Greenpeace also nominated the reef for the National Heritage List. Watt decides that one too.
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