Traditional owners bulldozed in government drive for development
In the coastal woodlands of Darwin, before the seasonal change from dry to fiercely humid, 25-year-old Larrakia woman Mililma May sat bolt upright as bulldozers groaned past her.
In the coastal woodlands of Darwin, before the seasonal change from dry to fiercely humid, 25-year-old Larrakia woman Mililma May sat bolt upright as bulldozers groaned past her.
She’d camped for weeks, on and off, at the entrance to her family’s traditional land on Lee Point, 18km from the city’s CBD. Alongside other protesters, May hoped to halt clearing by Defence Housing Australia of 130ha of savanna – land that’s home to eight cultural sites and more than 200 species of birds, including the kaleidoscopic Gouldian finch.
Panicked, May phoned her aunty, Larrakia elder Lorraine Williams. It was NAIDOC Week, the first days of July, and Williams, a cultural-heritage assessor and former ranger, was readying herself for official activities.
“I wore my red, black and yellow that day,” she says, remembering the moment she received the news. “Mili said: ‘I’m worried, they’re bringing in the bulldozers’, so I went down there with my big stick. Boom! I cried out, ‘This is not right. You cannot do this on NAIDOC Week. You cannot do this on any week!’ There’s footage of me absolutely screaming.”
Environment Centre NT director and former native title lawyer Kirsty Howey also rushed to the site. The community campaign to save Lee Point was like nothing she had seen in her 20 years in Darwin. It felt like the start of a mass mobilisation in support of traditional owners and cherished Top End spaces. “We were literally watching the bulldozers pushing over trees,” Howey says. “Mili was sitting there crying. Lorraine was standing with a stick in front of the gate. It was absolutely unbelievable.”
Equally unbelievable was what happened next. Williams, along with Tibby Quall, fellow traditional owner from the Danggalaba Larrakia clan, filed an emergency application to federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to cease the Lee Point clearing on cultural grounds. The night before, the pair had met lawyers from Environmental Justice Australia.
“We talked for hours about how we’re going to fight this,” Williams says. “The moon was coming up, the sun was down.” A month later, DHA quietly announced, via its website, a decision to pause works until March 2024. The bulldozers rolled out.
During the past two years there has been a dramatic upsurge in federal government movement on Indigenous rights and environmental protection in Australia: from the Climate Change Act and the attempted enshrining of an Indigenous voice to parliament, to changes to cultural heritage laws, along with a commitment to zero extinctions and conserving 30 per cent of Australia’s landmass by 2030.
But these objectives are pushing up hard against conflicting state and national political priorities, including a thirst for cleared land that supports housing developments or, even more pressing, rapidly expanding cotton and gas industries that are central to long-held ambitions to develop the north. Increasingly, traditional owners and native title holders are left out of landclearing decisions altogether or not given adequate time to object.
“We drive up and look and just cry,” traditional owner Teresa Banderson says of land cleared for cotton growing in Wagiman country near Pine Creek, 300km south of Darwin. “They don’t come and talk to the Wagiman or let us know what they’re doing – cotton and all that. They just go ahead. They just knock down trees. Wagiman, we worry about our sacred sites and our country.”
Wagiman country covers a lush stretch of tropical savanna woodland that follows the curves of the Daly River. The Daly is one of just a few Top End rivers that flow all year round, a system alive with crocodiles, 90 species of fish and eight out of the nine Territory species of freshwater turtles. Here, and across 45 per cent of the NT, native title rights coexist with pastoral land leases – creating a planning, cultural and environmental situation quite distinct from other parts of the nation.
“The tropical savannas of northern Australia are the largest and most intact of their kind in the world,” Deakin University ecologist and professor Euan Ritchie says. “They support tremendous biodiversity, as well as having substantial cultural and economic values. They’re also increasingly vulnerable, so anything that places this special region at risk, including further land clearing, is a real problem. We must avoid the mistakes of the past (excessive clearing in other states) being repeated and inflicted upon northern Australia.
“We really need to think about this place differently.”
Banderson worries for the mistakes already made here, as land clearing by cotton growers at nearby Claravale Station has occurred, at its closest point, just 15m from the river’s edge. Wagiman rangers were shocked to discover this in mid-2021. Later that year a complaint was raised with the NT government over unpermitted clearing of 200ha bordering the Daly.
More than two years later the case remains under investigation, although in August Tarwoo Station (near Katherine), an operation currently owned by West Australian and Northern Territory Cotton, was fined $7536 for the illegal clearing of 4ha of land as part of the same complaint.
It’s worth noting that Joanne Townsend, the public servant who issued Tarwoo Station with its clearing permit a day after receiving the initial complaint, also held responsibility for determining the outcome of the station’s breach on behalf of the then NT minister for infrastructure, planning and logistics, Eva Lawler.
The Northern Land Council, which defends the land rights of native title owners across the Top End, described the fine as “outrageously low”.
“It demonstrates that for a small fee you can clear land wherever and whenever you want,” the late chairman Dr Bush-Blanasi said in September. “Something needs to change. Regulations need to be stricter, investigations need to be more transparent and penalties must be harsher.”
Back in Wagiman country, as clearing and cotton farming progress, sources tell Inquirer that dumped soil and chemical run-off from razed land continue to enter the Daly River. “Where are these animals going to live? How are we going to drink the water?” Banderson asks. “Every time I go walking with the rangers, I cry in my country. My niece Daphne (Huddleston) says, ‘No, no, Aunty. Don’t do that.’ But I am feeling sad. Why do they do that in my country?”
Pastoral land clearing in the Territory involves scant environmental or cultural-heritage regulation. Applications for up to 5000ha of clearing – that’s equivalent to 12,350 football fields or the total land mass of Murujuga National Park in Western Australia’s Pilbara region – do not trigger an environmental assessment.
And when applying to clear less than 1000ha through a standard pastoral landclearing permit, pastoralists self-assess the environmental impacts of the clearing they propose and are not required to consult with traditional owners or land councils.
Applications are reviewed by the 10-member Pastoral Land Board, which as of next week will be led by cotton-industry advocate Paul Burke, former chief executive of the NT Farmers Federation. Five other board members are past or present pastoralists, pastoral company employees or livestock industry consultants or collaborators.
“It’s completely inadequate to have the Pastoral Land Board, which is loaded up with people with close links to the pastoral industry, deciding landclearing permits,” Howey says of a system seemingly designed to sideline voices such as Banderson’s, as well as those concerned about the influence of land clearing on carbon emissions, climate change and species extinctions.
As Jenita Enevoldsen of the Wilderness Society says, “There is a distinct lack of First Nations representation and environmental-science expertise on the Pastoral Land Board, which is concerning as they hold the power to decide on the approval of clearing permits across thousands of hectares of intact cultural landscapes.”
Earlier this year the Northern Land Council nominated Aboriginal representatives for board positions, but these suggestions were rejected.
In 2021 an international research report in the journal Global Change Biology classified three NT ecosystems as “collapsing”. These include the arid interior of central Australia, mangrove belts lining the northern coast, and savanna woodlands such as those at Lee Point and in Wagiman country. At the time Australian scientists, including co-author Ritchie, described the findings as potentially “the most comprehensive evaluation of the environmental state of play in Australia”, and linked their findings to “multiple, concurrent pressures from both global climate change and regional human impacts (such as land clearing)”.
Still, one month later the NT government halved its timeframe for accepting public comments on clearing permits to two weeks – enabling the fast-tracking of applications to clear up to 1000ha. “Which is like saying: ‘We don’t care what you might have to say about it,’ ” NLC chief executive Joe Martin-Jard says.
Martin-Jard’s concerns with the pitfalls of the permit system run hot with frustration. He says the brief window for comment on pastoral-use land permits means the NLC and others, such as the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority, can’t consult with affected native title holders or determine whether a given landclearing application will affect sacred sites. Though the NLC does submit comments on open applications, these fall on deaf ears, Martin-Jard says.
“They’re just ignored,” he says. “We see the Northern Territory government as hellbent on development at all costs.”
Since the Michael Gunner Labor government, now led by Natasha Fyles, was elected in 2015, landclearing rates have surged.
These reportedly increased tenfold in 2016 and 2017, and since 2018 have risen by more than 300 per cent. The trend looks set to continue, fuelled by the NT government’s Agribusiness Strategy. Released in May, this plan allocates 100,000ha of land for the cropping industry, within which cotton is the star act.
Although the Australia Institute slammed cotton’s alleged employment and revenue benefits to the NT economy in January, Cotton Australia says the criticism is “laughable” and cotton looks likely to deliver more than $3.5bn for the national economy this year.
The peak body says little land in the Territory has been cleared for cotton and its growers “comply with the consultation requirements determined by authorities, and we engage with the communities that we are part of on a regular basis”.
Should the Agribusiness Strategy’s nominated 100,000ha of cropland be reached, scientific modelling for this volume of savanna woodland clearing, debris burning and soil preparation, published in the journal Biogeosciences, indicates accompanying greenhouse gases emissions would likely total 14 million tonnes.
This is about same amount emitted by the whole of the NT in 2021, or 3 per cent of Australia’s total carbon emissions last year.
Northeast of Wagiman land, by the central bends of the Daly River, lies Malak Malak country. It’s a place famed for its barramundi, bull sharks and freshwater whiprays, along with its dedicated Indigenous ranger group.
The family of traditional owner and native title holder Matthew Shields has lived, hunted and swum here for generations. In recent times, he and the rangers have battled with invasive weeds such as mimosa and gamba grass. Shields worries cotton is “the next gamba grass”, the next invader – both as a weed and as a driver for land clearing. On travels between Darwin and the Daly River, he and his grandfather have removed escapee cotton plants from the side of the road. “We don’t want cotton here. None of us want it,” he says, referring to traditional owners from other parts of the NT.
Shields says his family wants their land kept intact. They worry about damage to sacred sites, as well as the disruption to wildlife, hunting, swimming and water purity. “And when all the animals have been moved along, we’re not going to see them again,” he says,
“Instead we’ll see big, massive open plains. It’s not going to be good out there. Most country has got songlines, you know. People say, ‘You’ve got beautiful country, why are they doing this?’ ”
As well as knocking down habitat and making areas hotter and drier, clearing also fragments formerly connected landscapes and makes it harder for wildlife to move among areas in search of food, shelter and places to breed. It also means native animals are more exposed to feral predators, particularly cats.
“As habitat is destroyed and fragmented, threatened-species populations become more isolated and smaller in size,” ecologist Ritchie says. “The more that happens, the more likely they are to go extinct. It is literally death by a thousand cuts.”
Shields says if the Malak Malak were consulted early, they would share their knowledge of the land and be willing to tell pastoralists where they could clear to avoid sacred sites. Those conversations are not happening, so clearing moves ahead “behind their backs”. Native title rights offer no protection, he says. “I feel powerless, and a bit speechless.”
When asked for a response to public concerns about roughshod land clearing – including the impact of deforestation on climate change and biodiversity – a Territory government spokesperson says it “is committed to achieving a $40bn economy by 2030 across various industries, including mining, energy and agriculture, and we continue to keep environmental protection front and centre of key decision-making”.
Agricultural production on cleared land makes up 0.22 per cent of the Territory’s landmass, the government says. It did not reply directly to a question on whether it was hearing disquiet from traditional owners about the lack of consultation on landclearing decisions. Given this silence from legislators, First Nations and conservation groups are taking matters into their own hands – through the courts.
In February, the NLC and the Environment Centre NT launched proceedings in the Territory Supreme Court against a Pastoral Land Board decision to permit a Vietnamese company to clear just under 1000ha at Auvergne Station, 350km southwest of Katherine.
The station owner, Clean Agriculture and International Tourism, later withdrew its clearing request and settled the case with the Environment Centre. The NLC chose to continue court proceedings, presumably in the hope of seeing the matter spark reforms to the permit system.
Both organisations say they are not opposed to development but want this issue approached sustainably, with care for country. “We don’t want the rights of Aboriginal people trampled on … in the mad rush to clear land,” Martin-Jard says. He wants to see native title holders consulted early in the piece, and for Aboriginal people to be involved in the careful environmental mapping of areas where clearing is proposed.
Other projects raising community alarm include Mataranka Hot Springs, a major tourism destination at the southern edge of the tropics, where an application has sought clearing within 75m of the springs.
Then there’s the 67,500ha Keep Plains Agricultural Development on the Ord River bordering WA; and the $1.5bn federal government co-funded Middle Arm Sustainable Resources Precinct, a proposed gas, petrochemicals and hydrogen processing and production plant in Darwin Harbour – which in September became the subject of a new federal Senate investigation.
Larrakia traditional owner Williams describes the Middle Arm project as “gut-wrenching”. Speaking to Inquirer near Darwin’s CBD, Williams points out across the milky-blue waters of the Arafura Sea. “The industrialisation of Middle Arm will destroy all of this harbour,” she says. “Most other people just need the harbour because it’s water, they need to float on it and for the water just to run. But Larrakia need it to survive. To poison our waters is to poison our airways. To destroy our land, to clear everything – it’s killing us.”
Since European settlement, Australia has lost 40 per cent of its forested areas. Victoria is the most cleared state, though Queensland’s clearing footprint surpasses that of all other states and territories, largely owing to its beef industry.
As land clearing becomes paired with climate change as “twin crises”, pressure mounts on government and industry to improve land-management practices with stronger environmental protection and cultural-heritage laws, a wider embrace of regenerative-farming techniques, and tougher market-driven measures.
The EU parliament’s April decision to prohibit the sale of products linked to deforestation is a prime example of the latter, a move it says is designed “to fight climate change and biodiversity loss”. The first round of commodities includes palm oil, cattle, wood, coffee, cocoa, rubber and soy. A review clause in the law could allow for its extension to other products, such as cotton, after 2025.
Last week Westpac echoed this move and announced plans to set a zero-deforestation target for loans – the first Australian bank to do so.
Locally, the NT still awaits basic environmental safeguards. State of the Environment reporting, for example, is not in place here as it is in other states and territories. Similarly, the Territory is the only jurisdiction lacking native-vegetation laws and a conservation strategy to protect vulnerable ecosystems such as its savanna woodlands.
“In many ways, this still feels like the wild west because of the lack of regulatory frameworks and government scrutiny,” says Jane Quinlan, the Environmental Justice Australia lawyer who acted on behalf of the traditional owners at Lee Point. “Life in the NT can feel like a world away from other parts of Australia, but it doesn’t mean that environmental protection should be a world behind.” Other jurisdictions have far more rigorous regulations for land clearing too, she says.
On this point, the Albanese government is watching. After the ABC first reported the alleged unpermitted landclearing cases earlier this year, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water opened an investigation into whether these actions breached national environment law. A departmental spokesperson said they were also ascertaining whether the region’s clearing activities complied with this.
Before the bulldozers left Lee Point, protesters from all walks of life began making their way to the roadside camp. Some carried handpainted pictures of Gouldian finches. There were birdwatchers and bike riders, retired public servants and international travellers. Bill, a 93-year-old Territorian, sat among them. He’d never attended a protest in his life but told May: “I am here because I think the preservation of the natural environment is very important to everybody. We’re losing it in huge amounts every year. It’s time that governments at every level wake up to what’s happening.”
When the emergency application succeeded, Bill again came to camp with his walking stick and fold-out chair. “Protesting pays off,” he said proudly.
“Before that day, which was the best day ever, we had this ominous feeling that something big was going to happen. We just didn’t know what,” May says of the dry season night she and her aunty sat under a glowing full moon, preparing to throw all they had at preventing clearing on their country.
“Lee Point has shown me that there’s something in us all that makes us want to protect country. It’s beautiful watching the community come together and reveal their deep connections to this place. It’s not just about being Aboriginal and having those traditional-owner ties. It’s a human thing. It’s universal.”
Jennifer Pinkerton is a Darwin-based journalist.
