TNG forum for considered and general comments, page-347

If the NT Government want something to go ahead the ECNT has very little input.

A Chinese-backed agribusiness company has received the largest groundwater extraction licence in the history of the NT to use 40,000 megalitres of water a year for a major fruit and vegetable project in Central Australia that will mostly supply China.The NT Government’s granting of the 30-year licence, announced today, makes it the Northern Territory’s single largest private water allocation.Fortune Agribusiness Funds Management Pty Ltd, who became the owner of Singleton Station in 2016, intends to develop the 294,000-hectare pastoral property in the western Davenport region as one of Australia’s largest fruit and vegetable farms.In September 2020, the company applied for a groundwater extraction license stating that they are willing to spend more than $150 million to establish a 3,500-hectare irrigation project at Singleton Station, about 150 kilometres south of Tennant Creek.Fortune Agribusiness chairman Peter Wood had told the ABC last year that they would launch an eight-year development plan to grow a range of crops if their application was approved.“In the first year we’d be looking to grow some fairly simple annual crops — we’ve got on our list onions and rockmelons, even hay,” he said.“But our main focus is on some of the longer-term permanent tree crops, like citrus or grapes, and they’ll take some years to get to maturity.”He said more than 70 per cent of their planned produce would be exported, mainly to Asian markets, particularly China.However, some native title holders have strongly opposed the licence. The directors of the Mpwerempwer Aboriginal Corporation told The Guardian Australia they want the water to “stay in the country”.“They can’t take that water,” representatives said. “We need that water to stay there, for the animals and the trees … for bush tucker and bush medicine.”Environment Centre NT raises concernsThe Environment Centre NT criticised the government’s decision to grant the licence which it says “flies in the face of common sense, as well as science”.“Despite overwhelming opposition by Territorians, the Water Controller has just approved the Territory’s largest ever groundwater extraction licence, which will permit Fortune Agribusiness to drain an ancient aquifer in the arid interior of the Territory by 40 billion litres per year,” said ECNT co-director Kirsty Howey in a statement this afternoon.