Funding Review Ordered for Environmental Activist Group After Criticism from Judge

The Environmental Defenders Office may lose federal funding after a judge found it had coached Indigenous witnesses.

Minister for Environment Tanya Plibersek and government members and senators arrive at a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on Nov. 30, 2023. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

Federal funding for the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) is under review following adverse findings by a judge, who said it was clear the group had coached Indigenous witnesses and confected evidence. The organisation is budgeted to receive $8.2 million (US$5.4 million) over four years.

The Office—a community law centre funded by grants and occasionally fees charged to the people it represents—describes itself as “the largest environmental legal centre in the Australia-Pacific ... running groundbreaking litigation and leading law reform advocacy.”

It represented a group of Tiwi Islanders in a challenge against energy company Santos and its plan to build a 263-kilometre (163-mile) pipeline as part of its Barossa Gas project off the Northern Territory coast.

In January this year, federal court Justice Natalie Charlesworth dismissed the claim.

Santos has claimed the delay resulting from the case could increase the cost of the project by around $456 million.

Minister Orders Inquiry

Having reviewed the judgement, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has told her department to investigate whether the EDO was complying with its agreement over federal grant money.

Department Secretary David Fredericks confirmed the next payment to the EDO is due on April 30 and, while not committing to a timeline for the review, said that date is “highly relevant.”

During a Senate estimates hearing on Feb. 12, Country Liberal Party Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price asked if the department was investigating the credibility of other cases involving the EDO’s expert, Michael O'Leary, an associate professor of climate geoscience at the University of Western Australia, who Justice Charlesworth said had misled some of the Indigenous plaintiffs.

Mr. Fredricks said the department was not conducting such investigations, as it was ultimately a matter for the Business Grants Hub, the supervisor of the grants contract with the EDO.

In an opinion piece she wrote for The Australian newspaper, Senator Price said: “Organisations such as the EDO, and the individuals who run them, are only too happy to use the plight of some of our most marginalised Australians to further their own ideological or political agenda,” and claimed this was by no means uncommon.

Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has vowed to defund the EDO if the Liberals are re-elected, accusing it of manipulating court systems to stall major projects—a criticism echoed by the industry group Australian Energy Producers.

Single Video Enough to Discredit Evidence: Judge

In her judgement, Justice Charlesworth said: “The material supports an inference that Indigenous instructions have been distorted and manipulated before being presented to this Court via an expert report, and I so find.”

She also referred to a video that had been presented as evidence—known as Video 39—which the judge said “depicts what could only be described as the EDO lawyer drawing on the map in a way that could not on any reasonable view truthfully reflect what the Tiwi informant had said.”

“The content of Video 39 alone is sufficient to reduce the integrity and hence the reliability of the cultural mapping exercise to nought,” she said.

She added that an EDO lawyer and an expert witness had engaged in “a form of subtle coaching” of some Tiwi people, getting them to tell “their stories in a way that propelled their traditions into the sea and into the vicinity of the pipeline.”