Senior Albanese government ministers disagreed over whether a controversial Northern Territory gas pipeline should be allowed to go ahead without being fully assessed under national environment laws, an internal document shows.
An environment department brief from February shows representatives for the agriculture minister, Julie Collins, and the Indigenous affairs minister, Malarndirri McCarthy, were concerned about the impact of the Sturt Plateau pipeline’s construction on threatened species and First Nations communities.
A delegate for Collins argued the development should be declared a “controlled action”, a step that indicates it was likely to have a significant impact on a nationally important environmental issue and required a thorough assessment under federal law.
The brief, released under freedom of information laws, shows this was not accepted by the department, acting on behalf of the then environment minister, Tanya Plibersek. It concluded the pipeline did not need a national environmental impact statement before going ahead.
APA Group, an energy infrastructure business, plans to build the 37km pipeline to connect a fracking operation in the NT’s Beetaloo gas basin with the existing Amadeus pipeline. About 134 hectares of vegetation – equivalent to about 18 football grounds – would be cleared in the NT outback, about 600km south of Darwin. The new pipeline is expected to operate for 40 years.
The environment department said that the construction would clear “high -quality habitat” for the critically endangered northern blue-tongued skink, including about 29 hectares that was “likely critical for the survival of the species”.
But it decided the pipeline route did “not form part of the species’ area of occupancy” and concern about the skink was not grounds to fully assess the development.
Collins’ delegate disagreed. They said the pipeline should be fully assessed due to its potential impact on threatened species habitat and the assessment should consider “cumulative impacts” – that is, that the pipeline and the Shenandoah pilot fracking project developed by Tamboran Resources should be considered together.
Agriculture minister Julie Collins in the House of Representatives. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
The delegate argued that approval of the development should include conditions to protect “the resource base on which agriculture depends” – including groundwater – and Indigenous culture.
McCarthy’s delegate told the environment department that First Nations groups were concerned about the project’s connection to fracking, which they opposed due to its potential impact on “water supplies and aquifers, the environment, culture, sacred sites and songlines”.
But a delegate for the minister for resources and northern Australia, Madeleine King, backed APA Group’s view that the pipeline did not need a full assessment, arguing it was “unlikely to cause significant impact on protected matters” under environment law and was “key enabling infrastructure to Tamboran’s activity within the Beetaloo basin”.
Hannah Ekin, from the Arid Lands Environment Centre, said in her opinion the brief showed gas industry interests had been prioritised over concerns about the environment and Indigenous culture.
She said it was “really frustrating” that Plibersek did not act on calls for the pipeline to be fully assessed, and particularly that McCarthy’s comments had been disregarded, given she was an NT senator familiar with the region and local Indigenous concerns.
Ekin said the environment department brief indicated the pipeline was found to not need an assessment in part because it was deemed as not “integral” to the extraction of gas. She said this made no sense given the pipeline’s explicit purpose was to ensure gas from Shenandoah could get to Darwin and be used under a deal between Tamboran and the NT government.
She said the impact of the pipeline and the fracking development should have been assessed as one. “The federal government must stop putting off looking at the terrible impacts this fracking project will have on the local environment and on the climate,” Ekin said.
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She said the NT government had removed laws that protected communities and the environment and urged the new federal environment minister, Murray Watt, to “step up and call these fracking projects in for independent assessment”. Otherwise, she said, “it’s only a matter of time before we have an environmental disaster”.
Georgina Woods, from the grassroots environmental organisation Lock the Gate Alliance, said the pipeline was “part of the apparatus for fracking in the NT” and should have activated a “water trigger” in federal law for a full assessment. The trigger requires the environment minister to consider the impact of major fossil fuel developments on water resources.
“We don’t feel enough attention is being paid by the federal government to the environmental consequences already under way in the NT as part of the fracking industry,” Woods said. “To see the agriculture department raise concerns, to see the Indigenous affairs department raise concerns, and for these not to be taken up and acted upon is frustrating.”
Federal ministers and the environment department declined to respond to questions from Guardian Australia. APA Group also declined to comment. The NT government was asked for its response.
Warnings of ‘environmental catastrophe’
Lock the Gate is challenging Tamboran Resources’ Shenandoah pilot project in the federal court, alleging it is likely to affect water resources and should not be allowed to go ahead unless referred to Watt for assessment. A hearing starts on Monday.
Fracking in the Beetaloo basin is part of a planned major gas industry expansion overseen by the NT Country Liberal party government. It said this week it had abandoned a commitment made before it was elected last year to set a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target for 2030.
Scientists and environmentalists have accused the NT government of also overseeing a ramping up of forest and vegetation destruction on pastoral properties. Nearly 26,000 hectares – an area about 90 times larger than the Sydney CBD – was approved for clearing in the first six months of this year.
More than half of the clearing was given the green light by the NT government’s pastoral land board in a nine-day period earlier this month. None of it was deemed significant enough to refer for assessment under federal environment laws for the potential impact on threatened species and ecosystems.
Kirsty Howey, from the Environment Centre NT, accused the CLP of unleashing an “environmental catastrophe” and “approving more deforestation in six months than has been approved in any one year in the last decade”.
Watt this week met with representatives from industry, environment, farming and First Nations organisations to discuss changes to nature laws. He suggested they could both improve environmental protection and lead to faster approval decisions for development proposals.
Howey said the laws should be immediately reformed “to stop the rampant deforestation and nature destruction occurring across northern Australia before it’s too late for the largest intact savanna woodland left on Earth”.
