Jobs on the line: Southern activists The Sunrise Project actively recruiting to fight NT gas
Southern activists have launched a new campaign to stop the Territory’s job creating NT gas production. Read what they’re up to.
Northern Territory
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Smug southerners with bulging bank accounts have opened up another front in their war against Territory economic development.
Having spectacularly failed to stop Santos’ Barossa gas project, and with their opposition to the Beetaloo Basin gaining zero political traction from the major parties, a southern gas lobby is now actively recruiting to stop the development of job creating NT gas projects.
Virtue-signalling shockers, The Sunrise Project, are advertising for two “passionate” southern-based activists “to prevent gas expansion and protect our environment and climate”.
Funded by a cohort of local and international organisations, The Sunrise Project reported revenues in excess of $75 million in 2023.
It is or has been backed by a cohort of local and international organisations from first-world economies including Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Oak Foundation, the Laudes Foundation and the KR Foundation.
The advertisement said the two “passionate” southern-based activists would be employed “to prevent gas expansion and protect our environment and climate”.
Successful applicants would “build bold campaigns that drive real-world change and help accelerate the shift beyond fossil fuels”.
The salary ranges between $118,716 and $131,261 plus benefits.
Territory Mining and Energy Minister Gerard Maley accused the “activist organisation” of undermining the NT and WA economies.
“It’s hardly surprising that an activist organisation committed to undermining the resource industries of the NT and WA sees no issue in recruiting ‘senior strategists’ to interfere in jurisdictions they don’t even live in,” Mr Maley said.
“It’s comical that their own selection criteria list ‘familiarity with the WA or NT political, legal and social context’ as merely ’desirable’.
“You would think that a basic understanding of the people and places affected by their ideological campaigns would be a minimum requirement.
“Territorians, and northern Australia more broadly, are increasingly frustrated by activists that parachute in with their narrow political agendas, leaving behind real social and economic consequences they never have to face themselves.
“The East Coast is already confronting serious structural gas shortfalls. northern Australia’s gas reserves, particularly in the Beetaloo Basin, offer the only cost-effective and timely potential solution.
“Yet groups like the Sunrise Project, an Australian-registered charity, are actively working to prevent these developments.
“Trying to shut down the resources sector, the largest employer in many remote Territory communities, doesn’t align with what most Australians would consider charitable.
“In reality, these campaigns jeopardise significant royalty flows to some of the country’s most marginalised communities; communities that deserve economic opportunity and the chance for self-determination.
“Ideology doesn’t solve Australia’s energy crisis, and the Northern Territory should not be treated as a policy experiment by activists.”
Australian Energy Producers NT Manager David Slama said Sunrise Project’s campaign undermined energy security.
“The misleading title Sunrise Project, would see the sunset on thousands of jobs,” he said.
“At a time when Australia urgently needs new gas supply, these activist campaigns recklessly undermine our energy security, threaten Territorians jobs and damage our reputation as a stable place to invest.
“Banning new as projects is not climate policy – it is energy and economic sabotage that would put Australia’s energy security at-risk, and drive up energy costs., decimate industries and risk thousands of jobs.”
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Originally published as Jobs on the line: Southern activists The Sunrise Project actively recruiting to fight NT gas
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