Chief Minister plans to hand herself powers to override environmental approval process
Leaked documents have revealed the new CLP government’s plans to give the chief minister and an unelected bureaucrat far-reaching power to override and fast-track environmental approvals for large scale development.
The laws would undermine planning processes designed to manage environmental risks and disempower communities affected by large scale water handouts, land clearing and pollution from gas fields and mines. The paper lays out the Finocchario Government’s intent to use these laws to fast-track dangerous and unpopular projects which could include fracking in the Beetaloo Basin and the Singleton groundwater licence.
The CLP’s plans also present a dangerous consolidation of power, enabling the Chief Minister and the “Territory Coordinator” to override environmental laws altogether.
“These proposed powers set a dangerous precedent in the Northern Territory, and they must be wholly condemned as undemocratic and unacceptable.”
“These powers must be resisted and cannot apply to developments such as that at Singleton Station. The Singleton project is the largest groundwater licence in NT history, and one of Australia’s largest groundwater licences using up to 40 billion litres of groundwater annually for free. That is equivalent to the annual water use of the Darwin region every single year and will lower the groundwater table by up to 50 metres,damaging and destroying a 50km stretch of groundwater dependent habitat. The Singleton proposal is a catastrophe”.
“Singleton is the first agricultural project in NT history required to undergo an Environment Impact Statement because of the unprecedented levels of risk and uncertainty tied to this project and outstanding community critique that this project will never be acceptable”
- Alex Vaughan, Policy Officer, Arid Lands Environment Centre
“This Singleton project is about people's lives and health you know, and people's homes, we can’t be moved around all over again, we want to stay. Where will we go?”
“This is about our human rights and access to water, we need to have access to this water”
“Water keeps us alive, it is living water, water is life, it is what sustains us, without water we will perish, the insects and animals too.”
“We need them big trees, those big white ghost gums, they home to birds that build their nests in those trees.”
“Those insects don’t have a voice and that is why we speak on behalf of the insects and the animals. It is all out of balance”
“It will not benefit the community, we are the ones that suffer on the land, we have been suffering too much”
- Maureen Jipiyiliya Nampijinpa O'Keefe, Kaytetye Warkpiri woman born and raised in Ali Curung
“The leaked papers show a dramatic departure from current laws based on the community having a right to have a say about destructive projects that will impact them.”
“The proposed changes show the newly elected government are hellbent on fast tracking deeply unpopular projects like fracking in the Beetaloo basin at any cost, and are willing to override environmental laws altogether to do so.
- Hannah Ekin, Frack free NT campaigner, Arid Lands Environment Centre
Ends - Media contact: Hannah Ekin 0491283520