In the media
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NT government defends cotton industry’s land and water use as calls grow for federal inquiry
Learn moreThe NT government has defended allowing pastoralists to change pastoral lease uses without a permit, saying it’s legal to grow crops to feed livestock.
A former pastoral land regulator says that rule only allows permit-free land use changes if the primary purpose of growing the crop is for cattle feed.
What’s next?
Some are calling for a Commonwealth inquiry into the NT government’s adherence to its own land use and water laws.
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The NT Land Corporation maintains ‘strategic land’ for future projects. Where did it come from?
Learn moreRevelations of large-scale land clearing, free water licences and questionable legal grounds for cotton farming in the Northern Territory have been aired on Monday night’s Four Corners program.
Among the issues raised in the program was the existence of a quasi-government entity, the NT Land Corporation, which manages about 600,000 hectares of land for economic development.
That’s more than twice the size of the Australian Capital Territory.
Despite its influence, little is known about the NT Land Corporation and how it works.
Here’s what we do know.
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Four Corners: Water Grab
Learn moreAt the desert oasis of Bitter Springs, tourists float lazily through water so clear it reflects the piercing blue sky. Ringed by a rare palm forest, this spring, near the town of Mataranka, is a must for those on a road trip between Darwin and Alice Springs.
But there are fears these thermal pools and the nearby Roper River, famous for barramundi fishing, are under threat. Water levels are dropping. And if it dries up further this oasis may not survive a bushfire. These rivers are the lifeblood of the Northern Territory, fed by springs and an ancient network of groundwater.
It’s water the NT government is giving away for free. Giant new water licences are being handed out to developers, in search of the next boom crop. And a new lucrative, but controversial, player has entered — cotton.
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‘NT government-commissioned probe of report predicting cotton environmental impacts finds most claims supported’: ABC
Learn moreRead the story HERE, listen HERE, or watch it HERE.
An independent assessment that the Northern Territory government commissioned to find out whether a green group’s report falsely claimed developing a major cotton industry could damage rivers and aquifers, has found most of its conclusions were correct.
Story by Jane Bardon. (ABC 2 January, 2024).You can sign our action asking the NT Govt to act to protect our rivers, floodplains and surrounding savannas HERE.
cotton, cotton industry, Daly River, environment, floodplainharvesting, land clearing, murraydarlingbasin, NT Government, Territory rivers, waterextraction
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Cotton gin opening increases Northern development tussle: ABC PM
Learn moreListen to the story HERE.
The opening of the NT’s first cotton processing plant is being touted as an important step towards developing the North by the industry, but increasing community concerns over water use.
Interviews:
Sue Brosnan, Katherine cotton gin project coordinator
David Connolly, Tipperary Stations Group General Manager
Rosina Farrell, Jilkminggan Mangarrayi community leader
Kirsty Howey, NT Environment Centre
This report is from Jane Bardon. (ABC PM 15 Dec 2023 ).See updates and developments from this story HERE.
You can sign our action asking the NT Govt to act to protect our rivers, floodplains and surrounding savannas HERE.
cotton, cotton industry, Daly River, environment, floodplainharvesting, land clearing, murraydarlingbasin, NT Government, Territory rivers, waterextraction
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Land clearing permit challenged on Auvergne cattle station
Learn moreThe Northern Territory government is facing two separate lawsuits over a land clearing permit its critics say could damage important habitats and jeopardise sacred Indigenous sites.
Key points:
- A cattle station south-west of Darwin, near the Victoria River,m has been provided a permit to clear land for both cattle and a cotton growing trial
- The Northern Land Council and Environment Centre NT are taking legal action to have the permit overturned
- The permit was granted under Labor’s new streamlined approvals process
[wpgmza id=”4″]In November 2022, the Pastoral Land Board provided a permit for clearing of about 900 hectares on Auvergne Station, south-west of Darwin near the Western Australian border.
The land will predominantly be used for cattle grazing and fodder, but land clearing documents show about 250 hectares of that land is intended for a cotton growing trial.
The Environment Centre NT is seeking to have the permit revoked, saying that clearing land to grow cotton is not allowed under the type of permit that was granted.
“Right now, land clearing is skyrocketing in the Northern Territory, spurred in part by the cotton industry’s huge expansion plans. Land clearing is the biggest threat to biodiversity in Australia, and clearing for cotton will decimate local wildlife, impact rivers and add to greenhouse gas emissions.”
ECNT director Kirsty HoweyThe Northern Land Council is also launching legal action against the clearing. It says the rights of native title-holders were overlooked in the decision-making process, and is concerned that sacred sites are being put at risk by land clearing, claiming the land board doesn’t require applicants to obtain sacred site clearances.
“The land that is being cleared across the Northern Territory is not forgotten land that no one cares about. It belongs to Aboriginal people. There are legal rights over that land that must be respected.”
Northern Land Council Chief executive Joe Martin-JardWhat you can do
cotton, cotton industry, environment, floodplainharvesting, land clearing, murraydarlingbasin, NT Government, Territory rivers, Victoria River, waterextraction
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‘Aboriginal land council levels criticism at NT government over unregulated land clearing’: ABC
Learn moreExcerpt: “A prominent lobby group says land clearing is risking the NT’s river networks — which are some of the most pristine in the world — and the failure to properly regulate land clearing for a cotton industry is disappointing.
Warren de With, the president of the Amateur Fishermen’s Association of the NT (AFANT), said extensive clearing near the Daly River — a tourism and barramundi fishing mecca — was of most concern.”
Read the full story HERE or watch it below.
ABC TV – LAND CLEARING: Aboriginal land council ‘loses confidence’ with NT Govt. Report by Roxanne Fitzgerald. You can also listen to the NT Country Hour segment below:
You can sign our action asking the NT Govt to act to protect our rivers, floodplains and surrounding savannas HERE.
cotton, cotton industry, Daly River, environment, floodplainharvesting, land clearing, murraydarlingbasin, NT Government, roper, roper river, Territory rivers, waterextraction
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‘Turning a blind eye’ to cotton and land clearing in the NT: ABC 730
Learn moreRead the story HERE or watch it below.
‘The Northern Territory is home to one of the world’s last untouched tropical savannas. That fragile landscape and its rivers are now the new frontier for the nation’s cotton industry.
But satellite images suggest land clearing is taking place without a permit, raising questions about the Territory government’s oversight.’
This report is from Roxanne Fitzgerald and producer Hannah Meagher. (ABC 7.30 January 11, 2023).See updates and developments from this story HERE.
You can sign our action asking the NT Govt to act to protect our rivers, floodplains and surrounding savannas HERE.
cotton, cotton industry, Daly River, environment, floodplainharvesting, land clearing, murraydarlingbasin, NT Government, Territory rivers, waterextraction
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Floodplain harvesting killed the Murray Darling, now the Gunner Government wants to bring it here
Learn moreThe Top End is home to some of the world’s last free-flowing tropical rivers and largely intact savanna landscapes. Nature is truly abundant here, and it’s why so many of us love it.
That’s why I’m so worried about the Gunner Government and cotton industry’s plan to bring the same policies that have slowly strangled the life out of the Murray-Darling Basin to the Territory.
In the coming weeks, the government is expected to release their plan to let big business take more of these natural wet season flows. This is the biggest water policy change in the NT in decades and would give the green light for the extraction of much more water from our already stretched systems for cotton. This could be catastrophic for the health of our rivers and the communities that rely on them.
The Territory’s natural cycle fluctuates between the two extremes – the Dry, and the flood events of the Wet. Territorians know it’s these big water flows along our rivers and floodplains that feed and sustain our vibrant ecosystems. Research on Top End rivers consistently shows that no water is wasted in the system, and that even small reductions in run-off can have big impacts on fish stocks like barramundi. Is this something we are willing to risk?
A war of words is about to be played out in the field of water management, and none of us should be fooled. This plan involves some truly sneaky wordplay – the rebranding of big dams as something good for rivers, for example, or trying to downplay the proportion of water that will be taken from our systems for cotton using largely meaningless percentages.
There is no way this will pass the Territory pub test.
To understand the potential disaster that awaits, we only have to look south at the Murray Darling Basin and the impact of mis-management, large-agribusiness lobbyists and over-allocation of water from the once-mighty river system. The unfettered push by the cotton industry has seen the rivers sucked dry, despite the best of intentions from overwhelmed regulators, leading to the mass fish deaths and dry riverbeds. Murray-Darling locals are urging us not to make the mistakes they did in letting this controversial industry in. Once they start, they don’t stop – until the rivers are a shadow of their once mighty selves.
And that’s in a place where they have invested billions of dollars in water management. We all know how it will end here if they allow this industry to build dams for cotton. Water regulation is pitiable in the Northern Territory, with terrible decisions like the massive water licence granted at Singleton Station making it clear to Territorians just whose interests are being protected when it comes to our precious water. It is no surprise that the Environmental Defenders Office recently declared our water laws as among the worst in the country. Stronger laws, transparent enforcement, a precautionary approach and effective compliance and monitoring are all the basics of modern water management that are not currently up to standard in the Territory.
We need to recognise that our rivers and floodplains are a connected system, and we need to keep dams, bulldozers and pollution away from sensitive areas of river catchments.
We can look after the Northern Territory’s unique ecosystems and the communities that rely on them by adopting a better approach to safeguard our river systems and their catchments. Protecting our rivers needs to be a priority, not an afterthought. A lacklustre attempt to spin this rush to take more water from our rivers isn’t fooling anyone.
Co-Director of the Environment Centre NT Kirsty Howey
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ABC Coverage: Water allocation licenses, rise of agriculture poses widening threat to Christmas prawns from the north
Learn moreBy Roxanne Fitzgerald (ABC) | Friday 24 December 2021
Days out from Christmas, an unassuming, corner-block building on Darwin’s harbour is bustling inside.
“[It’s] crazy. It hasn’t stopped at all,” Laura Luchetti said.
Every year, a stampede of customers stocking up on a Christmas staple has Laura rushed off her feet.
Prawns of all types have been “flying out the door” of the local seafood shop, making up almost half of the business’s sales at this time of year.
But advocates say affordable wild-caught prawns could soon be off the festive table, with species in the north facing a growing threat from industries looking to extract massive amounts of water from rivers.
Every year, about 8,000 tonnes of wild prawns are caught from a fishery in the north spanning nearly a million square kilometres from Cape York to Cape Londonderry, the northernmost point of mainland Western Australia.
The crustaceans are shipped all over the world, but here in Australia nearly 80 per cent of the catch is eaten across the Christmas period.
“The real joy is what a wild prawn can mean for a Christmas feast. It’s just such a classically iconic Australian thing to do,” said David Carter, chief executive of commercial fishing company Austral Fisheries.
David Carter, the chief executive of Austral Fisheries, says he is concerned about the future of prawns. (Supplied: Austral Fisheries) But he said increased agriculture development was posing a widening threat to the future of Christmas prawns due to the NT government’s water allocation policy plans and the expansion of irrigated agriculture in the Northern Territory.
He named the “impact of increased agricultural use of water, excess use of agricultural chemicals and cotton” as some of the biggest threats.
“We run across a big geographical area, but each one of these potentially adds to a death by 1000 cuts.”
‘A threat to our livelihood’
When Cyclone Tracy hit Darwin on Christmas Eve 1974, demolishing 80 per cent of building structures and taking more than 70 lives, it also dropped buckets of rain.
That year led to the northern fishery’s largest-ever haul of banana prawns. Fourteen thousand tonnes were caught, and nothing has beaten it to this day.
“The underpinning of our successful fishery over 40 years has been the environmental flows that sustain the baby prawn,” Mr Carter said.
The prawn’s life cycle is intrinsically linked with the wet and dry that characterises the Top End, and a good year hinges on full rivers and big downpours that flush baby prawns into the ocean.
Larvae is spawned at sea before embarking on a massive journey into rivers, where they await the wet season’s monsoonal rains.
“So, if agricultural industries are allowed to take a lot of water from those river systems it does pose a threat to our livelihood,” he said.
“Whether it’s irrigated pasture for cattle, or more intensive cropping operations like cotton, it all begins to interfere with the natural flow of those coastal and estuarine systems that are so important to us.”
Around 8,000 tonnes of prawns are caught in the north by trawling boats every year. (Supplied: Austral Fisheries) Water policy puts pressure on long-standing industry
The Northern Territory government is consulting on possible changes to its longstanding 80:20 water rule, which determines how much of the resource must be allocated to the environment and how much can be used for drinking and by industries.
On its election in 2016, the Gunner government promised to improve the management of water licensing, but the rule has since been at the centre of controversy.
Mr Carter warned against policymakers going for “the next shiny thing” in terms of industry development “only to forget about legacy industries” like his, which he said have supplied both local and export markets and provided extensive regional economic activity for decades.
“As we keep impacting adversely on different parts of the fishery, amid climate change … then that absolutely increases the economic pressures on this long-standing industry.”
In April, the Northern Prawn Fishery Industry voiced its concerns to a Senate Committee.
Chief executive Annie Jarrett said water extraction “may reduce flow volumes, consequentially reducing crustacean and fish populations”.
“Sequential years of reduced flows due to water diversion for irrigation may increase the frequency of low-level flow years and hence increase the years of uneconomic catches to a level where the long-term economic viability of the NPF banana prawn fishery is compromised,” she said.
Banana prawn stocks from northern Australia are under threat. (Supplied: Austral Fisheries) Mitch Hart, the NT manager for the Pew Charitable Trusts, said the community and businesses that rely on healthy rivers “have made it clear that they are concerned”.
“We must ensure that our water management system is up to the task. Any environmental policy is only as effective as the regulatory regime within which it operates. There are serious structural deficiencies within the Northern Territory’s water regulatory regime,” he said.
A Northern Territory government spokeswoman said prawns were “not at risk”.
“The Territory government is developing a long-term, comprehensive strategic water plan to ensure the sustainable management of our water resources, and that water is available for drinking, growing and making valuable products,” she said.