LNP stops funding for Environmental Defenders Office despite election pledge
The state government has ditched an election pledge to continue funding for a service that provides free environmental legal challenges to farmers, Indigenous people and regional Queenslanders.
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Half-a-million dollars handed to the Queensland’s Environmental Defenders Office each year is being axed by the state government despite its pre-election promise to “continue funding”.
The EDO – which provides free environmental legal challenges for farmers, Indigenous people and regional Queenslanders – will lose the $500,000 per year it uses to employ two solicitors and maintain offices in Cairns and Brisbane.
It is despite a March 2024 promise by now Housing Minister Sam O’Connor – then the LNP’s environment spokesman – to “continue funding the EDO if the LNP is successful at the election”.
“Queenslanders care about their local environment so landholders and communities deserve some form of access to legal advice when potential threats arise to the special places they love,” Mr O’Connor’s email to the EDO said.
“While we will not agree with everything the EDO does, we believe the state government should continue to provide funding towards their operations just like they do with other community legal services.”
EDO chief executive officer David Morris said the broken promise meant the state’s most vulnerable would lose advice about the “very complex” environmental and planning law.
“Barely 200 days into the Crisafulli government’s first term, this has become the LNP’s first broken promise,” he said.
“Essentially, this decision denies many Queenslanders the opportunity to exercise their legal rights to protect the places and species they love that are threatened by inappropriate, destructive developments.
“Even with the environmental legal aid EDO provides, the scales are tipped heavily in the favour of mining companies, big irrigators, and property developers … many communities won’t even know their rights, let alone have the chance to exercise them.”
Mr Morris said the EDO would remain open thanks to public donations, but warned some people would be turned away.
Despite Mr O’Connor’s commitment, a spokeswoman for Environment Minister Andrew Powell claimed the LNP had only pledged to continue existing funding.
“As per our commitment before the election, we honoured Labor’s funding agreement in its entirety which expired at the end of June 2025,” she said.
“There is no additional money budgeted beyond that period of time.
“As part of future assessments for programs, the EDO would have to convince the government that proper processes had been put in place to qualify for further funding after being ordered to pay $9m in costs after a judge criticised EDO lawyers for coaching a witness.”
The EDO was ordered to pay Santos $9m following a failed legal challenge to its Barossa offshore gas project in the Northern Territory.
The court ruled the EDO had coached a witnesses during a meeting with Tiwi islanders challenging the project.
Queensland Conservation Council Director Dave Copeman said the “broken promise” was history repeating.
“We were told before the election that the LNP had learnt the lessons from the Newman government’s destructive approach, but this funding cut is straight out of the Campbell Newman playbook,” he said.
Originally published as LNP stops funding for Environmental Defenders Office despite election pledge
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