Tag: Water

An independent study of the Singleton Horticulture Project has found that it is dependent on a massive public subsidy, promised economic benefits that are overstated, and has significant ecological, cultural and social costs that have not been properly considered.

The report team, led by University of South Australia water economics professor Jeff Connor, analysed the business case put forward for Singleton by Fortune Agribusiness.

Fortune Agribusiness says Singleton will create 110 permanent and 1350 seasonal jobs, but the report finds it delivers little for the Northern Territory. The experts conclude Singleton is likely to generate only 26-36 fulltime equivalent jobs for Territorians, with just 5-8 of those jobs going to Aboriginal communities in the Barkly.

The report says a realistic estimate of economic benefit to Territorians was between $13 million and $28 million a year, rather than the $110 million claimed by Fortune Agribusiness.

By analysing prices paid for water on other Australian projects, the experts estimated the value of the free water subsidy being given to Fortune by the NT Government at between $70 million and $300 million plus.

Professor Connor said Singleton was one of a long line of irrigation proposals that promised more than they delivered.

“The Singleton water project is no exception,” he said. “It seeks the allocation of a large volume of water free of charge in return for employment benefits which are largely illusory, especially as regards the creation of full-time jobs for local indigenous workers.”

The Central Land Council-commissioned report was peer reviewed pro bono by Professor Quentin Grafton of the Australian National University who backed its conclusions.

Professor Grafton found the free water subsidy meant the NT is giving away “in the order of $250m” which “is not justified from either a public interest or a cost-benefit perspective”.

Releasing the report today, Central Land Council chief executive Les Turner said it poses serious questions about the project’s social, cultural and environmental costs.

“Not only has the project failed the economic benefits test, it has also neglected to account for the damage it would do to Aboriginal communities and country”.

Mr Turner said the CLC would continue to stand with traditional owners who oppose the government’s decision to give Fortune 40 gigalitres of finite ground water every year for 30 years.

“We are talking about emptying Sydney Harbour twice, about giving away water worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The report finds the NT Government’s lack of proper consultation with Aboriginal communities contradicts the Government’s own policies on Closing the Gap and the Everyone Together 2019-2029 Strategy, and the Government’s obligations under the National Water Initiative.

Review of the Singleton Horticulture Project                                                                    Peer Review by Prof Q. Gratton

The corporation of the native title holders for Singleton Station, south of Tennant Creek, will today serve a claim against the Northern Territory Government.

The Mpwerempwer [pronounced emPUrra-empurra] Aboriginal Corporation is asking the NT Supreme Court to set aside NT Families Minister Kate Worden’s decision to grant Fortune Agribusiness a 30-year groundwater extraction licence for Singleton Station for up to 40 giga litres per year.

The controversial decision concerns the largest amount of groundwater the NT has ever given away – free of charge.

Fortune Agribusiness plans to grow thirsty crops in the desert, largely for export, and is a co-defendant in the claim in which the Central Land Council is acting on behalf of Mpwerempwer.

“We’re asking the court to declare parts of the extraction licence invalid or to quash it altogether,” CLC chief executive Les Turner said.

“We will show that the minister didn’t comply with the NT Water Act, failed to consider Aboriginal cultural values and other important matters, and that her decision was seriously irrational,” he said.

“We will argue that her decision is uncertain – not even a proper decision – because she left so many significant matters to be decided later.

“This uncertainty means that what Fortune Agribusiness is eventually allowed to do might be very different from what it proposed in its licence application.

“The water licence decision is unconscionable considering the impacts of climate change on highly vulnerable desert communities.”

Mr Turner said Minister Worden, acting as the delegate of NT Water Security Minister Eva Lawler, also failed to give Mpwerempwer procedural fairness.

In December the CLC asked the government not to grant any more licences in the water control district which includes Singleton Station until the Wester Davenport water allocation plan has been reviewed.

It called for the freeze due to its grave concerns about the over-allocation of groundwater.

Earlier this month Jo Townsend, the water controller and chief executive of the Department of Environment, Parks and Water Security, told the CLC that she would defer her decisions on new or bigger water licences in the region until a new Western Davenport water allocation plan is declared.

Mr Turner commended that result, saying, “This buys more time to review the science of our aquifers so all the water isn’t given away. This includes Singleton”.

The CLC encourages the NT Government to incorporate scientific best practices in the new water allocation plan and ensure there is enough data to make robust licence decisions.

“More facts, more knowledge, more understanding of our aquifers is needed. Only then can Aboriginal cultural values and the environment be fully protected.”

16 February 2022

The CLC has asked the NT water controller not to grant any more water licences in the Western Davenport water control district, south of Tennant Creek, until the district’s water allocation plan has been reviewed.

“We are very concerned about the risk of over-allocation of groundwater,” CLC chief executive Lesley Turner said.

Already granted licences in the district’s central plains management zone, including the controversial 40,000 mega litres-per-year licence for Singleton Station, take up a massive 51,104 mega litres of water per year.

“Two new licence applications from Neutral Junction Station, southwest of Singleton Station, and Murray Downs Station, southeast of Singleton, add up to 9,475 mega litres per year,” he said.

“If they are also granted, the 60,879 mega litres that are currently estimated to be available would be almost completely used up. This is an unacceptable risk.”

“We urge the water controller to decline the new water licence applications in the interest of the region’s traditional owners, native title holders and Aboriginal residents until a new plan based on a conservative estimate of water availability is in place.

“Their cultural connections and responsibilities for the plants, animals and sacred sites sustained by this groundwater are very much at stake, as are emerging small Aboriginal horticulture businesses.”

The district’s water allocation plan rates the risk of over-allocation as extreme and states that even if water allocation is staged and adaptive management plans are used the risk will remain high.

The expert panel that recently reviewed the water controller’s decision to grant the unprecedented Singleton Station water licence echoed these concerns.

It recommended a review of water availability estimates and said such a review “may result in a reduction in the ESY [estimated sustainable yield]”.

A week ago the water controller declared a new water allocation plan that extends the previous plan for 12 months, pending a water planning review.

“The water controller must also review water availability and certainty as part of this review and not kick the can down the road and leave the job to developers,” Mr Turner said.

The CLC represents traditional owners and native title holders on the water advisory committee which is expected to contribute to the next water allocation plan.

“This process will have no legitimacy without a full review of estimates of water availability backed by rigorous testing and data, rather than the guesswork on which the current plan is based,” Mr Turner said.

“Until further research into groundwater availability has been carried out no further licences must be granted.”

14 December 2021

The Central Land Council is exploring all legal avenues to challenge the Northern Territory Government’s decision to uphold the largest allocation of groundwater ever gifted to a private company in the NT.

“We are alarmed and appalled at the lack of procedural fairness it has afforded the traditional landowners and have no confidence in its decision,” CLC chief executive Les Turner said.

“The government can only rebuild trust if it scraps the licence and starts from scratch, doing a full public assessment of the potential impacts, as its own review panel proposed.”

“We are getting legal advice about our options. The licence is simply too big, too risky and threatens our sacred sites – and the review panel agrees.”
Mr Turner said the decision shows that the government only pays lip service to Aboriginal cultural values.

“The government leaves the company to identify how much water there is, to assess and monitor the impact of the licence on our water sites, such as soakages, trees and dreaming tracks.

“It has abrogated its responsibility to protect our sites and country and handballed it to Fortune Agribusiness.
“As one of our council members reminded no fewer than three NT ministers at our recent council meeting in Tennant Creek: this is not terra nullius – empty land.
“It is rich in important sites that are at risk if the company takes the water it has been so irresponsibly gifted – and again, the review panel agrees.”

The Northern Territory Government tailored guidelines for Fortune Agribusiness, allowing the company to destroy almost a third of groundwater-dependent ecosystems, many of them home to important sites.

“These guidelines only apply to the Western Davenport water control district and fly in the face of the protections for groundwater-dependent ecosystems in the district’s water allocation plan,” Mr Turner said.

“These guidelines were developed to meet the needs of Fortune Agribusiness,” Mr Turner said.

“The government’s decision to uphold the full licence reflects a development-at-any-cost approach that bush voters simply won’t tolerate.”

The CLC submitted expert anthropological and hydrogeological advice to the Singleton licence review panel.
It demonstrated, and the review panel agreed, that the water controller failed to take into account both the flimsiness of the data on which the Western Davenport water allocation plan is based and the existential threat the water licence poses to more than forty sacred sites in the region.
16 November 2021

Grace Kemarre Robinya of Tangentyere Artists has won the $10,000 Vincent Lingiari Art Award for her painting Raining at Laramba.

Chosen by this year’s judge Hetti Perkins, Ms Robinya’s painting was one of 26 finalists responding powerfully to the award’s theme Ngawa, Ngapa, Kapi, Kwatja, Water.

Raining at Laramba depicts country around Napperby Station, where Ms Robinya and her husband worked and raised their family.

Ms Perkins said the work “stood out as an unequivocal, elegant and profound statement about kwatye. It captures the dramatic vistas of rain in desert country and conveys the transformative and life-giving power of water”.

Ms Robinya used to live in the Laramba community, on Napperby, where residents are still forced to drink water that contains three times the level of uranium considered safe.

Born in Ntaria in 1942, she is an accomplished figurative painter whose works frequently feature her signature clouds with sheets of rain.

Her vibrant works for Tangentyere Artists powerfully evoke important life events, locations and contemporary life in the Alice Springs Town camps, where she lives today.

Of her winning work, she said simply, “It’s always raining, summertime, when stockmen mustering. Makes those hills look blue in the north. Raining, raining, all the time raining. Clouds are coming.”

Her work has been included in 55 exhibitions, and she has been a finalist in five significant awards, including the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award.

The exhibition opening at the Tangentyere Artists Gallery in Alice Springs last night is the third collaboration between Desart, the Central Land Council and Tangentyere Artists since they launched inaugural Vincent Lingiari Art Award in 2016.

This year’s theme asked artists from across Central Australia to reflect on the significance of water for their collective survival on their country.

“The scandalous situation in Ms Robinya’s home community of Laramba illustrates perfectly why we have seen such a strong response to this year’s theme,” CLC chief executive Les Turner said.

Hetti Kemerre Perkins, curator, writer and daughter of the CLC’s first director Charlie Perkins, shortlisted 26 of a record number of 47 entries.

The award was co-curated by Ms Perkins and Marisa Maher, curator and assistant manager at the Iltja Ntjarra Many Hands Art Centre in Mparntwe/Alice Springs.

Ms Perkins said the artists’ response to the theme ranged from works that were overtly political, with their calls to stop fracking and memories of now destroyed landscapes and important sites and send an urgent message about the importance of water.

“The water underground and overhead, in soaks, rockholes and creeks is our lifeblood, an essential part of the ancient ecology that we are part of.

“This delicate balance cannot be tampered with and the NT and Australian governments need to sit up and take notice of the truth our people are telling them, and nowhere more clearly than in our art,” she said.

Congratulating the winner, Desart CEO Philip Watkins said “Grace’s work is evocative of all that brings joy with rain, its life giving force, and its cultural significance.

“Safe, clean water is a fundamental right, yet many communities continue to struggle for this.”

“All the artists’ works in this exhibition respond to the emergency and fight for water rights”, he said.

The members of the CLC voted for their favourite award entry during their August council meeting near Vincent Lingiari’s home community of Daguragu.

On Wednesday night, Timothea Palmer accepted the CLC Delegates’ Choice Award on behalf of her mother, Leah Leaman, from Vincent Lingiari’s granddaughter Rosie Smiler.

The painting of Ms Leaman, who works out of the community’s Karungkarni Art and Culture Centre, celebrates her love of fishing in rivers and waterholes, of wetland brolgas and bush flowers.

Her work Following the Waterways tells the story of a couple, “the last of their kind”, who “followed the waterways by foot all the way from here to the coast … with their beloved dogs, billycan, hook spear and rolled-up little calico swag, never getting lost.”

Desart member art centres and artists with strong links to the CLC region were eligible to enter in the Vincent Lingiari Art Award.

The exhibition runs until the 13 October and features a walk through gallery developed with Agency Projects at https://desart.com.au/vincent-lingiari-art-award/.

The award is supported by the Peter Kittle Motor Company and Newmont Australia.

It kicks off a festival of Aboriginal art and culture this week in Alice Springs, including Desart’s Photography Prize which opens this Thursday and celebrates its 10th anniversary.

9 September 2021

Media contacts: Elke Wiesmann, media@clc.org.au, 0417 877 579 and Carmel    Young, programmanager@desart.com.au, 0411 534 913

Desart, the Central Land Council and Tangentyere Artists are proud to present the third Vincent Lingiari Art Award on Wednesday, September 8.

The winner of this year’s $10,000 prize, chosen by art curator and writer Hetti Kemerre Perkins, will be announced at 5:30pm at the Tangentyere Artists Gallery in Alice Springs. 

The exhibition features paintings and sculptures by 26 finalists who have responded to the theme Ngawa, Ngapa, Kapi, Kwatja, Water, which reflects just some of the many languages of Central Australia.

As CLC chair Sammy Wilson has said, “water rights are the new land rights”, and with a record 47 entries this year’s theme has certainly resonated. 

“We chose the theme because without safe, secure and adequate sources of water the spiritual, cultural and physical survival of our constituents on their own land is under threat,” CLC chief executive Les Turner said.

“This year’s Vincent Lingiari Art Award highlights the campaign for Aboriginal water rights the Northern Territory land councils kicked off last year with their call for a safe drinking water act,” Desart chief executive Philip Watkins said.

The chair of Tangentyere and inaugural winner of the Vincent Lingiari Art Award, Marlene Rubuntja, said the award “gives Aboriginal artists the opportunity to work to themes that are important not only to us but to everyone. Water is life”.

Ms Perkins said the artists’ response to the theme covered a range of viewpoints, from overtly political works with their calls to stop fracking to the beauty of cultural stories as old as water itself. 

She co-curated the exhibition with curator and assistant manager of the Iltja Ntjarra Many Hands art centre, Marisa Maher.

“It’s great that despite the Sydney lockdown we are still able to work collaboratively on this important exhibition,” Ms Maher said.

The winner of the CLC delegates choice award, selected by the council members on Vincent Lingiari’s country, will also be presented by Mr Lingiari’s granddaughters on the night.

Tangentyere Artists’ COVID plan is in place, and those wishing to attend must register via https://vlaa2021.eventbrite.com.au.

The event will be live screened on Desart socials https://www.facebook.com/desart.inc, Insta: @desartinc.

Contacts:

Elke Wiesmann – Central Land Council  Elke.Wiesmann@clc.org.au 0417 877 579

Carmel Young – Desart Inc programmanager@desart.com.au   0411 534 913

Traditional owner representatives will only get 45 minutes to make their case against the massive Singleton Station water licence during a secretive review panel hearing and have been barred from listening to the other opponents and the proponents of the licence.

The public and the media are excluded from the hearing on Friday, 3 September, in Darwin which will review the controversial 40,000 megalitre-a-year, 30 year licence decision.

Fortune Agribusiness, the company that wants to use the water to grow export crops in the desert, and the government department that supported the grant of the licence will appear before the panel in secret, without any interested parties present.

“The public and the landowners are being kept in the dark about the most audacious attempt to give away a public resource to big business in the Territory’s history,” Central Land Council chief executive Lesley Turner said.

To make matters worse, the licence review is being rushed through before a review of the region’s water allocation plan that must conclude at the end of this year.

The existing plan rates the risk of changes to future estimates of water availability as ”extreme” and the new plan could include a much lower estimate of the amount of water available for Fortune Agribusiness’ and other development projects.

 “This hasty process illustrates everything that’s rotten about NT water policy,” Mr Turner said.

“We provided hundreds of pages of expert evidence about sacred sites threatened by the NT’s largest-ever water licence and about very concerning hydrogeological problems, but our lawyer gets less than an hour to present on highly complex issues and answer questions.”

The CLC’s request to listen to the presentations from other applicants has also been declined.

“This is even though a recent four-hour review hearing about two water licences at Larrimah allowed applicants to be present for the entire hearing. What are they trying to hide about Singleton?”

The other applicants to the Singleton licence review panel hearing, the Centrefarm Aboriginal Horticulture, the Environment Centre NT and the Arid Land Environment Centre, also have just 45 minutes each to present new information and respond to questions.

In the case of the Larrimah water licence decisions the report from the review panel to the Environment Minister Eva Lawler was kept secret.

“We fully expect that the panel’s report about Singleton will meet the same fate but we appeal to her to do the right thing and make the report publicly available,” said Mr Turner.

The Central Land Council executive insists that the NT Government withdraw amendments scheduled for debate today which threaten traditional owner rights in jointly managed NT parks and lower the bar for the NT’s already poor water regulations even further.

Meeting in Alice Springs today, the executive intervened after the government repeatedly ignored calls to scrap the controversial amendments.

“They are clearly not listening to us, they are being very sneaky and they are only paying lip service to our land and water rights,” said CLC chair Sammy Wilson.

“This government is a threat to joint management and the water reforms we have been crying out for.”

CLC chief executive Lesley Turner said the amendments to the Territory Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act are so badly written that they threaten joint management of 20 national parks, such as Watarrka/Kings Canyon and the Iytwelepenty/Davenport Ranges National Park that the traditional owners have leased to the government for 99 years.

“We are very concerned that the amendments, which give the government a new power to authorise development on parks without needing the consent of traditional owners, could breach the leases for jointly managed parks and allow the owners to start a process of terminating them.”

“It’s scandalous that the government admitted to us that there are problems with its controversial amendments but said that they’ll pass them regardless and talk to us later about how to fix them,” he said.

“That’s what you get when you try to pass complicated legislation quickly and don’t have a scrutiny committee or any process of public consultation, accountability and transparency.”

Mr Turner also deplored the tabling of amendments to the Water Act designed to further reduce the already weak protections of our most precious resource.

“The government pretends it is merely tidying up the legislation but its real aim is to give more power to the water controller who is part of the department that is talking to developers about how they can get water licences.

“The amendments will allow the water controller to grant licences that bypass the strict conditions to protect water and cultural values we desperately need.

“We want to reform the Water Act first to remove clear conflicts of interest, for example by making the office of the water controller an independent body,” he said.

MEDIA CONTACT: Sasha Pavey | 0488 984 885| media@clc.org.au

The Central Land Council has urged the NT Government to withdraw a raft of controversial legislative amendments designed to further undermine the already weak protections of the Territory’s water.

The council is seeking the withdrawal of the proposed Territory Economic Reconstruction Committee (TERC) Omnibus Bill and the Environmental Law Bills which are due to be tabled at the August sittings of the Legislative Assembly and would significantly amend the NT Water Act 1992.

“The government must withdraw all water-related amendments until it has released a comprehensive water reform strategy for public scrutiny,” CLC chief executive Lesley Turner said.

The CLC is concerned the proposed changes fast track development but neglect urgently needed reforms to protect remote community drinking water, create a genuinely independent water regulator and overhaul water planning processes to make them more transparent.

“We are very concerned that the proposed amendments will further lower the bar for water licence approvals and shift ministerial oversight to unelected public servants,” Mr Turner said.

“The changes will make it easier for developers and speculators to get 30-year groundwater licences for free and for the responsible minister to shift accountability for decisions to the unelected water controller.”

The CLC has written to the Chief Minister to protest about the lack of public consultation about the proposed changes and the inadequate information about the bills it has received since it met with senior government staffers and the water controller in early June.

“Staff of the Department of Environment assured us that no further legislative reform would proceed without consultation,” Mr Turner said.
“We are appalled to find more substantive amendments to the Water Act published on the department’s website, without notice, just weeks later.

“Having failed to properly inform traditional landowners and invite public comment the government now seems intent on preventing us all from considering the wide-ranging implications of the proposed legislation,” Mr Turner said.

“What happened to the chief minister’s commitment to transparent government?”

Under the current Water Act the water minister must identify special circumstances, for example that the scientific understanding of a water resource is well established and certain, before granting licences for more than 10 years.

MEDIA CONTACT: Sasha Pavey | 0488 984 885| media@clc.org.au

The Central Land Council is applying for a review of the unprecedented decision to gift a private company 40,000 megalitres of finite water reserves each year for three decades to grow fruit and vegetables in the desert, largely for export.

In addition to a review under the Northern Territory’s Water Act, the CLC is also seeking an independent peer review of the ‘adaptive management’ plan the Northern Territory Government has asked the company, Fortune Agribusiness, to complete.

The CLC has asked the government to halt all activity in the meantime to ensure the integrity of the the review process.

“We call on the government to immediately stop the native vegetation clearance and non-pastoral use permits for the company, as well as the environmental impact assessment,” CLC chief executive Lesley Turner said.

Meeting in Tennant Creek, an hour’s drive north of Singleton Station, the CLC delegates considered independent hydrogeological advice which confirmed that neither the government’s water license decision nor its approach to managing it come close to addressing the concerns of the area’s native title holders and affected community residents.

“We have received independent expert advice that the license decision does nothing to assuage the grave concerns these groups have raised,” said Mr Turner.

“Our constituents now want us to pursue all avenues for objection because too little is known about how the decision will affect community drinking water for decades to come, including the impact on native plants, animals and sacred sites.”

“There is not enough data to address concerns of constituents or independent scientists” said Mr Turner.

“Frankly, they have no faith in the government’s capacity to manage the license in the public interest and are concerned that its decision is based on little more than guesswork.”

Independent hydrogeologist Dr Ryan Vogwill said the government’s water resource and impact assessment were “simplistic, based on inadequate investigations and very little site-specific data”.

Dr Vogwill said the “rushed approval process” for the Singleton allocation fell “well short of” what would be required for far smaller water allocation decisions in his home state of Western Australia, a world leader in groundwater management.

He found a major flaw of the allocation planning and impact assessment is that it ignores the most culturally and ecologically important places, such as numerous wetlands, springs and soaks.

He questioned whether the NT Government’s ‘adaptive management’ approach will be able to deal with its “insufficient understanding of impact risk”.

“It is fraught with problems and there have been serious issues in this context in other jurisdictions,” he warned.

“Adaptive management needs a really strong understanding of the water resource, biodiversity/cultural values and ground water dependent ecosystems impact potential to be successful, particularly in the long term.“This project does not currently have this.” 

Dr Vogwill said the government lacks the five to 10 years of data that would be required to “understand groundwater-environment-cultural linkages in sufficient detail to develop strong management criteria”.

Negative environmental impacts may not show up for a decade or more, “but by then it will be difficult to restrict/reduce the project’s water allocation as approval for the full licence will occur in a similar timeframe”.

Mr Turner said the only credible response to this devastating advice is to seek an independent peer review of Fortune Agribusiness’ ‘adaptive management’ plan. “This government has promised to be transparent, so we expect it to publish all the information independent scientists need to do their job,” he said.

Mr Turner said that without an independent review, the government would be putting the company in charge of managing a precious and finite public resource without scrutiny and transparency.

“We will not let them put the fox in charge of the hen house,” he said. 

Read a summary of Dr Vogwill’s advice