'Labor is timid': Greens, Pocock ramp up bid to ban Canberra sport fossil fuel ads

Clay will ramp up her attempts to convince ACT Labor to back her draft legislation when the ACT Assembly resumes business on Tuesday.

Labor has already rejected the proposal once, distancing themselves from Clay's plan when she first floated the idea two months ago.

The member for Ginninderra is keen to ban fossil fuel advertising at the AIS, Canberra Stadium, Manuka Oval and the Canberra Tennis Centre, while flagging the possibility of teams needing to cover up certain brands on their playing strips.

"The ACT needs to be an activist government when it comes to taking action on climate change," Clay said.

"Labor is being timid at a time when the urgency of the crisis requires us to be bold.

"This proposal sparks the kinds of conversations we need to have. How much longer are we going to let these companies that fuel climate change use our favourite sports to buy social licence and keep profiting off boiling the planet?"

The push has been welcomed by Independent ACT senator and former Wallabies captain David Pocock, who has been a long-time advocate of banning fossil fuel advertising in sports.

"I really do think fossil fuels are the new tobacco when it comes to advertising and buying social licence and trying to extend their social licence at a time when we know we have to be transitioning and moving away from from fossil fuels," he said on ABC Canberra.

"We're allowing them to get in front of millions of Australians and to say, hey, look, I'm a fossil fuel company, but I'm also associated with your favorite team."

Asked about how the ban could be implemented in practice in the ACT, Pocock pointed to France.

"France has a ban on alcohol advertising on jerseys and for many years when I think [the] South African rugby team was sponsored by a South African beer they had to have a different logo when they played in France," he said.

"It got the conversation going about which products and industries should we allow to use sport to sell."

Clay's move, however, is expected to fall flat after Labor said the proposal was "not ACT government policy, and is not something ACT Labor are considering".

None of the Canberra-based elite sporting teams are sponsored by fossil fuel companies, but a ban on advertising may affect some visiting teams or prompt different sports to reconsider the value of playing matches in the capital.

"Imagine the AFLW and AFL players running out with the BHP and Woodside logos blacked out on their jerseys. Imagine the conversations that would spark," Clay said last year.

"The ACT is the perfect place to begin the legislative ban."

Clay said her push was part of national campaigns by Climate Council and FrontRunners.

"The same companies who are fuelling dangerous climate change and the weather extremes it's unleashing are profiting from the feel-good association we have with sport to launder their public images," Climate Council head of advocacy Jennifer Rayner wrote in The Canberra Times.

"We don't have to let them do this. The Climate Council has been working with partners and sports, arts and events organisations around the country to call time on fossil fuel sponsorship."