\n<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s construction on threatened species and First Nations communities.<\/p>\n
A delegate for Collins argued the development should be declared a \u201ccontrolled action\u201d, 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
APA Group, an energy infrastructure business, plans to build the 37km pipeline to connect a fracking operation in the NT\u2019s Beetaloo gas basin with the existing Amadeus pipeline. About 134 hectares of vegetation \u2013 equivalent to about 18 football grounds \u2013 would be cleared in the NT outback, about 600km south of Darwin. The new pipeline is expected to operate for 40 years.<\/p>\n
The environment department said that the construction would clear \u201chigh -quality habitat\u201d for the critically endangered northern blue-tongued skink, including about 29 hectares that was \u201clikely critical for the survival of the species\u201d.<\/p>\n
But it decided the pipeline route did \u201cnot form part of the species\u2019 area of occupancy\u201d and concern about the skink was not grounds to fully assess the development.<\/p>\n
Collins\u2019 delegate disagreed. They said the pipeline should be fully assessed due to its potential impact on threatened species habitat and the assessment should consider \u201ccumulative impacts\u201d \u2013 that is, that the pipeline and the Shenandoah pilot fracking project developed by Tamboran Resources should be considered together.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Agriculture minister Julie Collins in the House of Representatives.<\/span> Photograph: Mike Bowers\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The delegate argued that approval of the development should include conditions to protect \u201cthe resource base on which agriculture depends\u201d \u2013 including groundwater \u2013 and Indigenous culture.<\/p>\n McCarthy\u2019s delegate told the environment department that First Nations groups were concerned about the project\u2019s connection to fracking, which they opposed due to its potential impact on \u201cwater supplies and aquifers, the environment, culture, sacred sites and songlines\u201d.<\/p>\n But a delegate for the minister for resources and northern Australia, Madeleine King, backed APA Group\u2019s view that the pipeline did not need a full assessment, arguing it was \u201cunlikely to cause significant impact on protected matters\u201d under environment law and was \u201ckey enabling infrastructure to Tamboran\u2019s activity within the Beetaloo basin\u201d.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n She said it was \u201creally frustrating\u201d that Plibersek did not act on calls for the pipeline to be fully assessed, and particularly that McCarthy\u2019s comments had been disregarded, given she was an NT senator familiar with the region and local Indigenous concerns.<\/p>\n Ekin said the environment department brief indicated the pipeline was found to not need an assessment in part because it was deemed as not \u201cintegral\u201d to the extraction of gas. She said this made no sense given the pipeline\u2019s explicit purpose was to ensure gas from Shenandoah could get to Darwin and be used under a deal between Tamboran and the NT government.<\/p>\n She said the impact of the pipeline and the fracking development should have been assessed as one. \u201cThe federal government must stop putting off looking at the terrible impacts this fracking project will have on the local environment and on the climate,\u201d Ekin said.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Clear Air Australia<\/span><\/p>\n Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n She said the NT government had removed laws that protected communities and the environment and urged the new federal environment minister, Murray Watt, to \u201cstep up and call these fracking projects in for independent assessment\u201d. Otherwise, she said, \u201cit\u2019s only a matter of time before we have an environmental disaster\u201d.<\/p>\n Georgina Woods, from the grassroots environmental organisation Lock the Gate Alliance, said the pipeline was \u201cpart of the apparatus for fracking in the NT\u201d and should have activated a \u201cwater trigger\u201d 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t 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,\u201d Woods said. \u201cTo 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.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Lock the Gate is challenging Tamboran Resources\u2019 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u2013 an area about 90 times larger than the Sydney CBD \u2013 was approved for clearing in the first six months of this year.<\/p>\n More than half of the clearing was given the green light by the NT government\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Kirsty Howey, from the Environment Centre NT, accused the CLP of unleashing an \u201cenvironmental catastrophe\u201d and \u201capproving more deforestation in six months than has been approved in any one year in the last decade\u201d.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Howey said the laws should be immediately reformed \u201cto stop the rampant deforestation and nature destruction occurring across northern Australia before it\u2019s too late for the largest intact savanna woodland left on Earth\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[866,83,870,872,319,867,869,864,321,865,868,871],"class_list":{"0":"post-9062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-contentious","9":"tag-decision","10":"tag-document","11":"tag-environment","12":"tag-federal","13":"tag-gas","14":"tag-internal","15":"tag-labor","16":"tag-ministers","17":"tag-odds","18":"tag-pipeline","19":"tag-shows"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Warnings of \u2018environmental catastrophe\u2019<\/h2>\n