The Northern Territory government has been accused of a "blatant and shameless" attack on nature over plans to delete a legal requirement that water must be allocated to the environment.
The Finocchiaro government intends to change the water rules that govern how much ground and surface water industry can take. The proposed changes would scrap the requirement that water allocation plans set aside water for the environment to maintain rivers, springs, wetlands and water-dependent ecosystems.
The water changes are part of a larger package that would also alter marine pollution, heritage and mining legislation. They come as the government plans a major expansion of fracking, datacentres and agricultural development.
According to environment groups, the bill would also remove a rule that total water use by industry remains below a limit set in each water allocation plan, and another that requires water resource management to comply with water allocation plans. Groups said it would further weaken the definition of "estimated sustainable yield", the amount of water that may be taken or used from a water resource.
The Wilderness Society chief executive, Kirsty Howey, said the move was "extreme even for the NT CLP government" and called on the federal environment minister, Murray Watt, to withhold commonwealth water funding if the bill passed. She said the government risked trading the territory's aquifers and rivers for "short-term gain and profiteering" by the gas, agriculture and tech industries.
"It's so blatant and shameless to literally be deleting the environment's water allocation," Howey said, adding that the "scant safeguards that did exist – and they were threadbare – have just been ripped up altogether".
The Central Land Council, which represents Indigenous people in the southern half of the NT, said the territory government was trying to "covertly" remove the last remaining protections Territorians had in the use and management of water. Its chief executive, Les Turner, said the government was "actively undermining community aspirations for improved and transparent water planning laws" and ignoring the voices of Aboriginal people from across the NT.
Turner said the federal government needed to strengthen its powers to intervene on projects affecting water and aquatic ecosystems. He noted that in August the high court quashed the NT government's decision to grant the Singleton Station licence after finding it had been unlawfully granted, and argued that under the current law native title holders would not have been able to challenge the merits of such a licence in the first place. He said this was especially troubling given future high-water-consuming developments such as data centres "looking to take advantage of lax regulations and free water".
The NT environment minister, Joshua Burgoyne, denied the bill dismantled environmental safeguards, saying the territory's "core framework" of environment-related laws – including those on environmental assessments and approvals, mining licences, pollution control, water allocation planning and heritage protection – remained. "Our government remains focused on facts, not the fearmongering tactics of environmental lobby groups," he said. He also pointed to what he described as a track record of protecting the environment, such as extending the Limmen Bight marine park.
The bill follows earlier changes since the CLP won government, including scrapping the NT's renewable energy target, abandoning a promise to implement a 43% emissions reduction target by 2030, and creating a territory coordinator role with the power to override 32 territory laws to fast-track developments.
Bree Ahrens, executive director of the Environment Centre NT, said the proposal puts the needs of industry above nature. "This is a smash and grab bill that puts water and nature last," she said, calling on the Albanese government to rule out handing federal assessment and decision-making powers under national nature laws to what she called "an increasingly rogue NT government". Changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act last year allow the federal government to transfer decision-making powers on whether a development can proceed to state and territory governments. Watt declined to comment.
Sources: The Guardian World.