Cunningham: Taxpayers’ cash used to fight elected gov’t decisions

As the EDO are ordered to pay a $9m legal bill to Santos, it shouldn’t be forgotten that much of the EDO’s funding comes from taxpayers, Matt Cunningham writes.

Santos Chief executive Kevin Gallagher speaks during the Santos AGM at the Adelaide Convention Centre Thursday, April, 6,2023. Picture Mark Brake

There’s a slogan doing the rounds among environmental activists that says, “don’t bulldoze democracy”.

It’s an odd statement, because it relates to the NT Government’s legislation to create a Territory Coordinator in an effort to fast-track the Territory’s approval process for significant projects.

There may be legitimate concerns with how the co-ordinator will be able to bypass regulations.

But it should be remembered the establishment of this office was a policy the Country Liberal Party took to the August election, where it won 17 of the NT Parliament’s 25 seats.

This is the definition of democracy, not a threat to its existence.

Justice Natalie Charlesworth on Thursday ordered the Environmental Defenders Office to pay $9m to cover Santos’ legal fees after their legal challenge on the Barossa pipeline was thrown out.

If you want a better example of democracy being bulldozed, you might care to look at some of the recent actions of environmental activists.

The Santos Barossa gas project is crucial for the Territory’s future.

It will extend the life of Darwin LNG by 20 years, create about 600 jobs during construction and 350 during production.

The NT Government estimates $2.5bn worth of wages and contracts will flow to Territorians from the project.

It has the support of both major parties and most Territorians.

But last October, just days before Santos was to begin work on a pipeline to transport the gas from the Barossa field 262km south to Darwin, a legal challenge was launched by the Environmental Defenders Office, acting on behalf of three Tiwi Islanders.

The EDO used a cultural mapping exercise done by “independent” University of Western Australia academic Mick O’Leary to argue the pipeline would disturb the dreaming stories of a rainbow serpent known as Ampiji, and an ancestral being known as the Crocodile Man. Court documents show Dr O’Leary had worked in collaboration with Antonia Burke, an anti-development activist from the Stop Barossa Gas group.

In January, Justice Natalie Charlesworth dismissed the claim.

She found EDO lawyers and Dr O’Leary had distorted and manipulated the Tiwi Islanders’ views to try to stop the pipeline.

“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.

“My conclusions about Dr O’Leary’s lack of independence and lack of scientific rigour are sufficient to discount or dismiss all of his reports for all purposes.”

October 2023: UWA Marine Geoscientist Dr Mick O'Leary interviewed by ABC News asserting that there are thousands of burial sites in the waters around Australia and that gas giant Santos' Tiwi Islands project would threaten those ancient burial grounds.

This week Justice Charlesworth ordered the EDO pay 100 per cent of Santos’s legal costs for the case; more than $9 million.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that much of the EDO’s funding comes from taxpayers.

So your money is being used to fight decisions made by the government that you elected. This is the true demolition of democracy.

This is not the only case of this environmental lawfare, but its certainly the most damning. Perhaps the most galling aspect of the whole affair is the manipulation of the Tiwi Islanders from the same groups who no-doubt like to tell their friends at dinner parties that they are allies of First Nations people.

Antonia Burke who collaborated with Dr O’Leary in the cultural mapping exercise, was a paid consultant for the EDO in the action against Santos. Picture: (A)manda Parkinson

At a mining club lunch in May, Lingiari MP and Tiwi Islander Marion Scrymgour was scathing about the actions of the environmentalists.

“It was with some crankiness that I was watching certain people being called Tiwi elders and traditional owners and they had very little connection to the Tiwi Islands,” she said.

Ms Scrymgour criticised “the Greens and others, who, for their own means, will use Aboriginal people to be able to run a narrative that for the eastern seaboard feeds in really well, that Aboriginal people don’t want development and that Aboriginal people are against all of this.”

The truth is that most Territorians – including most Aboriginal Territorians – want sensible development to help foster economic growth and make the NT a better, more prosperous place for all of us.

Those who use questionable means to try to stop this development, trample on our democracy in the process.

Originally published as Cunningham: Taxpayers’ cash used to fight elected gov’t decisions