THE NT government is moving to sideline environmental criticism. Photo: DFAT
The Northern Territory CLP Government is moving to cut green opposition to their resource projects.
It is cutting $100,000 in funding for both the Environment Centre NT (ECNT) and Arid Lands Environment Centre (ALEC) and follows an identical cut for the NT Environmental Defenders Office last year.
“We have been very up front in our agenda that it is game over for publicly funded lawfare that seeks to disrupt and delay economic progress,” NT Environment Minister Joshua Burgoyne claims.
“We have shifted the policy agenda … we are reprioritising our resources to ensure timeliness of assessments and approvals.”
But the move was attacked by ECNT executive director Kirsty Howey who called the government “weak and pathetic” in their “capitulation” to big business.
“ECNT and ALEC acted as trusted and effective environmental watchdogs and experts for decades,” she says.
“We don’t want money from a government hellbent on (the) destruction of communities and our environment.”
Howey added: “As the climate and biodiversity crises worsen and threaten the north’s very liveability, amid the CLP Government’s pursuit of some of the most environmentally destructive projects in the country, our work has never been more important.”
APPEALS
The government says that 18 appeals for third-party reviews of water resource decisions were filed since 2020, seven of them by the ECNT or ALEC.
There are two such appeals now before the NT Civil Administration Tribunal challenging the approval of environment plans for onshore oil activities, which government says cost it $50,000 in legal fees to date.
The government says it will redirect the $200,000 in annual funding to environmental projects, not groups.
“We will not spend another dollar on activists and economic vandals and their disruptive agendas,” Burgoyne says.
An ECNT statement listed 14 examples of conflicts of interest, mismanagement and compromise decision-making that they helped uncover.
The statement can be read in full here: ECNT funding cuts
