Update: Minister Lawler has the power to overturn the Singleton Station water licence within the next 30 days. Now is the time to take action. Call Minister Lawler and urge her to overturn this unconscionable water licence. Phone her office today 08 8999 5397.

Caring for Water and Country.

That’s the theme for 2021 National Water Week. We've seen some positive water reform recently. Yet for every step forward, the NT Government took three steps back this year by:

• Approving the Territory’s largest ever water licence on Singleton Station;
• Undermining the effectiveness of Water Allocation Plans;
• Creating new water licence categories allowing developers to trade and share entitlements with limited regulatory oversight;
• Removing the need to advertise water extraction licence applications separately to a development, reducing transparency;
• Failing to legislate minimum drinking water quality standards for NT remote communities.

By winding back our already weak water laws, the Government has set us on a collision course for a water crisis. 

There's profit to be made in a crisis, as we've seen time and time again... 

The water barons

There is a disturbing trend in the water sector across the country and right here in Central Australia. Water licences granted to private companies has seen the rise of water barons.

Investors are buying up thousands of hectares of land. The land isn’t valuable so much as getting access to what’s underneath: our precious groundwater.

“Water is the oil of the 21st century,”

said Andrew Liveris, CEO of DOW Chemical Company, back in 2008.  

With the approval of the Singleton Station water licence, this stark reality is beginning to materialise in front of us: water is the next commodity.

Water is sacred on this country

Water is life in Central Australia. We need water for culture, native plants, animals, and drinking water for communities.

Up to 40 sacred sites are part of ecosystems that draw on the aquifer under the Singleton Station water licence.

The NT government’s own water allocation plan, rates the potential threat to Aboriginal cultural values as “extreme”.

The writing is on the wall…

The Murray-Darling Basin is one of Australia’s greatest environmental assets. It is home to more than forty Indigenous nations and sustains 40 per cent of Australia’s food production.

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan was designed to create a market for its water and to safeguard the environment…

Instead, rural communities were sold down the river,  appalling environmental damage continues and a ruthless market formed, exploited by traders who buy and sell water like it was currency, or Bitcoin.

Water must be protected. Stop Singleton.

Last Friday, Environment Minister Eva Lawler received the report from the Water Resources Review panel on the Singleton Station water licence. 

Minister Lawler has the power to overturn the water licence within the next 30 days. Now is the time to take action. 

We urge you to pick up the phone and call Minister Lawler’s office to tell her to overturn the water licence.  

Join us in taking action. Call Minister Lawler on 08 8999 5397 today!