The Environmental Defenders Office has been ordered to pay Santos more than nine million dollars for its failed attempt to stop a major project off the Northern Territory coast – a decision that could have major ramifications for forestry.
The EDO—which has been involved in challenging several logging approvals in Australian native forests —ran a legal challenge on behalf of three Aboriginal people from the Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin, attempting to stop the construction of a gas pipeline.
Launched in October 2023, the case was brought just three days before Santos began work on the pipeline to transport gas from the Barossa field 262 kilometres south to Darwin. According to Joshua Burgoyne, Northern Territory’s Minister of Lands, Planning and Environment, the decision is a testament to the Territory’s and Commonwealth’s environmental laws, “showing they withstood strong scrutiny through the court system.”
“We have strong, contemporary environmental legislation in the NT that facilitates economic development,” he said. “We are reaffirming our election commitment that we will not be spending taxpayers’ hard-earned money on organisations such as the Environmental Defenders Office, who only seek to stop projects and limit the opportunities for the Territory.”
The EDO had claimed the pipeline would interfere with the Tiwi’s dreaming stories, disturbing the travels of a rainbow serpent known as Ampitji and an ancestral being known as the Crocodile Man. Their case relied on a cultural mapping exercise by University of Western Australia climate geoscientist Mick O’Leary. However, in January, Justice Natalie Charlesworth dismissed the application and strongly criticised Dr O’Leary and the lawyers from the EDO.
“I have concluded that the cultural mapping exercise and the related opinions expressed about it are so lacking in integrity that no weight can be placed on them,” she said in her judgement, noting concerns with Dr O’Leary’s independence and credibility given his close links with Antonia Burke, an activist from the Stop Barossa Campaign.
“My conclusions about Dr O’Leary’s lack of regard for the truth, lack of independence and lack of scientific rigour are sufficient to discount or dismiss all of his reports for all purposes,” Justice Charlesworth said.
In February, the federal opposition – now neck and neck in the polls – joined Australian Energy Producers and the Australian Forest Products Association – the peak body for the Australian forest products supply chain – in calling for action against the EDO: “They have obviously been discredited in a recent federal court case, but the federal government has had nothing to say about it,” Mr Dutton, the federal Opposition leader, told resources groups in West Australia at the time.
“We think it needs to be defunded.”
Peter Dutton, Opposition Leader on the Environmental Defenders Office.
Mr Dutton’s commitment follows a pledge by the (now elected) LNP in Queensland to pull state funding and calls from former WA Liberal premier Colin Barnett for the group to be abolished altogether.
