Marine systems face pressures that require adaptive, multi-level governance. However, at all levels—from local communities to international treaties—environmental governance is shaped by moral questions about what matters, who is responsible, and what should be done. Local Government Areas (LGAs) are inextricably embedded in the multi-sector interests and political economy of their electorates and thus act as translators and enactors between higher levels of governance. As such, LGAs offer a window into how place-based local governance engages with—and at times resists—the conservation agendas and policy mandates underpinning Australia's Strategy for Nature.
Drawing on a discourse analysis of 155 planning documents from GBR-adjacent local councils, we examine how LGAs frame environmental problems, express urgency and scale, attribute—or deflect—responsibility, and mobilize competing local interests. We pay particular attention to LGAs in fossil fuel producing and port-adjacent regions, where the scalar politics of short-term growth and long-term climate commitment are most starkly in tension. What emerges is a regionally differentiated moral geography—locally specific, place-anchored, and largely disconnected from the scales at which ocean governance is made— and underscoring why understanding local normative commitments is essential to operationalising national conservation strategies in practice.