Timothy Parish, Greens candidate for Solomon, says the Greens anticipate strong support on the back of mounting community concerns over the threats to water posed by plans to fast-track fracking in the NT.
“All Australians should be concerned that plans to fast-track fracking with over a billion dollars of public funds are a bad investment that will hasten climate change,” said Mr Parish.
“But for many Territorians, the immediate concern are the impacts of water consumption, and the risk of contamination.”
“People near Tindal, whose groundwater is contaminated by PFAS and are now reliant on external supplies. Here in Darwin, we’ve been warned to limit consumption from Rapid Creek, due to PFAS run-off from the RAAF base.”
“These tragic cases are a timely reminder of how precious – and how vulnerable – our water resources, and the ecosystems they support, truly are.”
“And while contamination is a serious risk, consumption is a hard requirement. Those in rural Darwin faced with conserving bore water after a dry wet, know that water is a precious finite shared resource that demands high level protection,” said Mr Parish.
“The Pepper inquiry recommended regional assessments (SREBAs) that would identify groundwater dependent ecosystems that might be vulnerable to water consumption. But we’ve seen extraction applications from Santos and Origin that are attempting to lock in allocations ahead of that required information.”
“Greens in federal parliament will vote to extend the Water Trigger in federal environment laws to include NT shale fracking. This would guarantee federal oversight of relevant environmental assessment, while we continue to demand an outright ban on this unsafe, unwanted, unacceptable industrial threat.”
