The Northern Territory already has the weakest water regulations in the country, now they could be even weaker. The NT Environment Minister, Minister Burgoyne, has introduced a bill to Parliament with a suite of changes that dismantle water and environment protections. It will:

• Gut water protections
• Increase the Minister’s own power
• Reduce scrutiny over water and multiple environmental regulations

Stand up for water. Join us in calling for the bill to be withdrawn.

Across the Territory, there are water-guzzling projects being challenged by the community at every stage. From cotton farming to AI data centres to the trillion-litre groundwater-guzzling Singleton Station water licence.

Communities care deeply about water. Water nourishes plants, animals and communities, keeping them alive and flourishing. This bill leaves water resources vulnerable to unsustainable extraction, but we know Territorians will continue to stand up for water and so will we.

These changes are the rogue CLP NT Government continuing to turn the Territory’s nature into a sacrifice zone for industry. The bill rolls out the regulatory red carpet for large-scale water extraction projects such as fracking, AI data centres and agriculture - putting private profit over public good. Let's hold them accountable.

How the bill guts water protections:

The proposed changes significantly weaken the process for sustainably allocating water in the Territory by gutting "Water Allocation Plans":

• It scraps the legal requirement for water to be allocated to the environment.

• Merely "regard" for the environment is required when determining sustainable use. This is an incredibly weak definition which offers near-zero protection for nature.

• It removes the legal requirement that water usage stays below what has been allocated in a plan.

• The bill will also allow the Minister to scrap a Water Allocation Plan for a region at any time without public consultation.

• The bill removes the explicit requirement that water resources are managed in accordance with the Water Allocation Plan, further weakening the ability to enforce sustainable allocation of water.

• The proposal will also weaken the Water Advisory Committee, a committee of community representatives which advises on water allocation. Environmental protections are further weakened through this change because the requirement for the committee to advise within "ecological constraints" is removed.

How the bill weakens environment regulations:

• It reduces public consultation periods for mining licences.

• It reduces pathways for the public to challenge heritage listing decisions.

• It expands ministerial discretion over returning security deposits to mining companies, weakening protections for the public bearing the cost of rehabilitating mining sites.

• Licences under the Waste Management and Pollution Control Act will no longer need to have an expiry date, and may be in force until surrendered or cancelled. This reduces scrutiny over these licences.