For Jingili singer-songwriter Stuart Nuggett, “water is life” and he wants to see it protected for future generations. “I do a song about the effects of fracking on water. It has a strong message about how water is sacred, how water is life,” he says.
Nuggett is based in Alice Springs but comes from Elliott, which sits within the region of the Northern Territory known as the Beetaloo basin, where traditional owners have been fighting to protect their country from fracking.
With his mother, Janet Gregory, and musician Dave Garnham, Nuggett penned the song Ilbingini Agiyabarda – When the Water Goes Down – as a way to share his concerns about the potential expansion of the gas industry on his country.
“Especially for the next generation and the children of the next generation – fighting for them to be able to have water and a life and be free of poison and destruction of country,” he says.
Nuggett took his concerns to Canberra this week, where he and Mudburra traditional owner Ray Dimakarri Dixon, also a singer-songwriter, performed for MPs and their staff at Parliament House.
Over two days in Canberra, Nuggett and traditional owners from the Beetaloo region met with Labor MPs and members of the crossbench.
They are calling on the government to move before the end of the year to fulfil its commitment to expand the water trigger to all forms of unconventional gas.
They also want the government to amend guidelines for the water trigger to require the consideration of the cultural and spiritual value and significance of water resources to First Nations people.
The Albanese government has promised to expand the water trigger as part of a package of reforms to Australia’s national environmental laws. But an exposure draft is not expected to be published for public consultation until late this year, meaning legislation will not be introduced before 2024.
Independent MPs are urging the government to act sooner to expand the trigger, with the member for Mackellar, Sophie Scamps, planning to introduce a private member’s bill in the next sitting of parliament.
“This is one thing we think they should do and by the end of the year,” Scamps says. “It will be a very simple change to the water trigger to encompass what the government has already agreed they will do and is needed.”
The meetings between traditional owners and MPs this week follow last month’s protests in Canberra by health professionals and NT residents about the expansion of the gas industry in the Northern Territory.
Earlier this year, the Northern Territory government gave the green light for gas production to begin in the basin.
Companies will still need to make financial decisions about whether to proceed and apply for required environmental approvals. But if the Beetaloo did reach full production it could see thousands of wells across the landscape.
“We need to watch over our young [people’s] future. Our country is crying out for our water,” says Jocelyn James, a Mangarrayi and Yangman elder and traditional owner for Jilkminggan.
“Forty years ago we had river channels and lagoons full of water, full of food for us … now they are dry so early in the season. This is climate change. We are feeling it already. And still they want more water, more fracking, more land clearing.”
A spokesperson for the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, says “Labor’s strong new environment laws will include a water trigger”.
“A detailed draft of the laws will be released later this year for comment. We would welcome support, across party lines, to expedite our strong new laws through the parliament,” they say.
In the meantime the government has made its independent expert scientific committee on coal seam gas and large coal mining development available to help the Northern Territory government “assess the impacts of gas projects seeking their approval”, they say.
“This is the same committee that will assess water impacts of projects when the water trigger is legislated.”
Nuggett and Dixon have two further concerts planned in Sydney over the weekend, one at the Red Rattler Theatre in Marrickville on Friday and the other, supported by teal independent MPs, at Naremburn on the lower north shore on Saturday.
“As a singer-songwriter, music is the strongest way to reach out,” Nuggett says.
“Hopefully the message will get out and [people] see the struggle that we’re facing.”
