EDITORIAL: The cynical Environmental Defenders Office erodes Australians’ faith in the system

To the zealots of the Environmental Defenders Office, the law is not something to be upheld.

It’s a weapon, just another instrument to be applied with as much force as possible to further their ideologically-driven, economy-wrecking campaign against the resources industry.

Truth, fairness and professional integrity are expendable in this battle.

To them, the end justifies the means. The aim is to tie projects up in legal limbo for as long as possible, draining them of profitability.

That was clearly the case when the EDO cooked up nonsense evidence in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to kill off a $6.2 billion gas project in the Northern Territory.

Work on Santos’ Barossa gas pipeline ground to a halt in November, when a small group of Tiwi Island traditional owners — represented by the taxpayer-funded legal service — claimed it would destroy Aboriginal cultural heritage by intersecting with the submerged “Crocodile Man” songline and the underwater resting place of the rainbow serpent.

It was, as Federal Court Justice Natalie Charlesworth found earlier this year, all a furphy. Just a cynical lie by the EDO to stop the project by any means necessary.

Even if that meant using the Tiwi Islanders they were supposed to be representing as mere pawns, and treating their traditional beliefs with absolute contempt.

Now, the EDO will be made to pay for their catastrophic error of judgment.

The organisation has been ordered to pay Santos’ court costs of $9.04 million, which will likely put it under significant financial strain.

That is money that the EDO’s backers — which include State and Federal governments as well as private donors — would have expected to be used legitimately, protecting the environment from genuine harm.

Instead, it was wasted on this confected crusade, which has not only done nothing to protect the environment, but has also shaken Australians’ trust in the process.

And that is this saga’s true cost.

Australians want our nation’s Indigenous cultural heritage preserved, as they also want to preserve our natural environment. The tragic example of Rio Tinto and the Juukan Gorge fiasco is proof of that.

For the system to work, we need to be able to trust that when we’re told that something has sacred significance, it’s the truth. Not something cynically dreamt up by a coterie of activist academics over an email chain.

This is the reality of what industry is dealing with — professional activists hell bent on standing in the way of economy-boosting projects.

That they have been slapped down in this attempt, and made to pay, is monumental. It sends a strong message to the EDO and their ilk that this behaviour won’t be tolerated. The law is not an instrument to be cynically abused.

This is an important step in restoring the balance to environmental law, which in recent years has tipped too far in the activists’ favour.