NT minister claims Earth’s magnetic poles could flip if territory doesn’t use more groundwater

Robyn Cahill claimed the NT had so much groundwater ‘we need to use some of it otherwise we might find ourselves flipping the poles again’. Photograph: Lloyd Jones/AAP

A Northern Territory minister has been criticised for scientifically inaccurate claims that groundwater in the Northern Territory needs to be used to prevent the Earth’s magnetic poles from flipping.

The NT minister for trade and business, Robyn Cahill, made the claim while speaking in Darwin last week about the government’s push to make the territory “the datacentre capital of the globe”.