Traditional Owners, doctors and scientists have joined environment and human rights organisations in signing a letter calling on APA Group to end its plans to build a pipeline enabling gas fracking in the Northern Territory.
The letter has been signed by more than 20 First Nations, environment and civil society organisations and is being delivered to APA chief executive Adam Watson and board of directors at the company's annual general meeting in Sydney on Thursday.
Delivery of the petition, signed by more than 17,000 people, follows the sale last week of half a billion dollars worth of APA shares by major shareholder UniSuper, after more than 1000 scientists and academics called on the university sector super fund to end its backing for gas fracking.
Market Forces, which targets institutions that finance environmentally destructive projects and holds them accountable, says APA must listen to the thousands of people who are calling on the company not to build pipelines that would enable dangerous gas fracking.
The proposed pipelines would unlock emissions from the Beetaloo Basin, 500km south-east of Darwin, that are unsafe and incompatible with APA's climate goals, Market Forces campaigner Rachel Deans said.
Market Forces and Sustainable Investment Exchange have lodged a shareholder resolution calling on APA to disclose how it plans to manage emissions from new pipelines, including those enabling fracking of the Beetaloo Basin.
More than 120 shareholders have joined with Market Forces calling on investors to vote in favour of the resolution holding APA to account on its commitment to net zero emissions at its annual general meeting.
Samuel Janama Sandy, chair of Nurrdalinji Aboriginal Corporation, which represents native title holders from the Beetaloo Basin region said the laying of pipelines "would help gas companies frack and destroy our land and water".
"Gas pipelines are a ticking time bomb," he said.
"We're worried about a big explosion and fires spreading. Our country is highly flammable, with grasses, trees and strong winds that fan fires."
The Beetaloo development was "a gigantic carbon bomb" that would significantly exacerbate the climate emergency, climate scientist Lesley Hughes said.
"Our environment, economy, health and our children's futures just can't afford it," she said.
Gas fracking poisons water and increases the risk of birth defects in communities living near fracking wells," Doctors for the Environment executive director Kate Wylie said.
"The evidence is there and well known by the gas industry, and any expansion of this harmful product is unethical in the extreme," she said.
Fracking the Beetaloo basin risks contamination of vital water supplies and the direct health impacts for communities living near fracking wells are well documented, Darwin paediatrician Louise Woodward said.
"It is completely unethical to impose this dirty and harmful project on the people of the Northern Territory and completely unconscionable to enable projects which exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions in the middle of a climate crisis," she said.
