Green law activists’ $16bn risk to projects following Santos decision
The Environmental Defenders Office is threatening to tie up more than $16bn worth of projects in pending litigation, amidst renewed calls for green activist court cases to lose taxpayer funding.
The Environmental Defenders Office is threatening to tie up more than $16bn worth of projects in pending litigation, amid renewed calls for green activists to lose taxpayer funding for court cases after the government-funded legal service was dealt two Federal Court blows in less than a week.
The calls come after the EDO lost a landmark case against Santos’s $5.3bn Barossa LNG project on Monday, with claims the company’s proposed 262km pipeline would cause irreparable damage to First Nations people and their sites being rejected.
The EDO, which again began receiving money from Labor last year after a 10-year funding drought initiated by the Abbott government, is carrying out four additional cases in the Federal Court – one involving Woodside’s $16.5bn Scarborough offshore gas field and another relating to the federal government’s $13bn Murray-Darling Basin water plan.
The Australian Conservation Foundation, which brought the case against Woodside and is being represented by the EDO, claims the project will emit 1.37 billion tonnes of greenhouse pollution over 25 years, which would negatively impact the Great Barrier Reef and result in coral bleaching.
The case is due to be heard in September this year.
The EDO is also representing the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations in a legal challenge against Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek’s approval last year of the NSW Fractured Rock Water Resource Plan, as part of larger Murray-Darling plans.
Affected First Nations people were not properly consulted about the plan, the EDO will argue, including about their social, cultural and spiritual values of the water resources.
The EDO is also representing Greenpeace in a matter alleging Woodside misled consumers about the climate harm of its gas and oil projects, and is representing the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility in a case accusing Santos of greenwashing.
Former Labor cabinet minister Joel Fitzgibbon said legal aid for activists was “hurting” the Australian economy, and called on the federal government to scrap taxpayer funds from the service.
“Hopefully the broader community is beginning to see activist lawfare for what it is, ideological and a threat to our living standards,“ he said.
Labor reinstated $10m in funding to the EDO last year, after the Abbott government axed it in 2013.
“In criminal matters the case for ensuring the accused has legal representation is a sound one,” Mr Fitzgibbon said. “But legal aid for green activists makes no sense, there is no case for public funding.”
Mr Fitzgibbon welcomed the Federal Court decision, and said the EDO should disclose a list of its donors.
“It was another spurious claim by the EDO, a body constantly in search of a cause rather than one championing the national interest,” he said. “Legal aid for activists is hurting our economy and our reputation as an attractive place to invest.
“There should be mandatory disclosure of donations. How else can we be confident there aren’t commercial interests at play?”
The Santos decision, which rejected claims by a group of Tiwi islanders that the proposed pipeline would damage Sea Country and upset two Dreaming stories creatures, marked a rare legal victory for the gas company, which had suffered a spate of defeats at the hands of environmentalists.
Federal Court justice Natalie Charlesworth’s ruling harshly criticised claims put forward by the EDO, and panned the “cultural mapping” evidence it cited as “so lacking in integrity that no weight can be placed” on it.
MST Marquee head of energy research Saul Kavonic said by funding the EDO, the federal government “is damaging Australia’s economy, putting tens of thousands of Australian jobs and workers’ safety at risk, creating logjams for government regulators and harming Australia’s reputation for investment”.
Additional reporting: Angelica Snowden
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