Santos is trying an unusual new tactic to fight the climate movement by pursuing environmental groups who championed the court case of traditional owners opposing the Barossa gas project.
With Australia increasingly recognising Indigenous land claims, now the climate battle often involves First Nations people. Santos is now pursuing the charities that cheered on a First Nations group in a failed action earlier this year, looking to recover its own legal costs. The company plans to drill up to eight gas wells north of Darwin in its massive Barossa Gas Project, pipe it under the Timor Sea past the Tiwi Islands and deliver it into Darwin Harbour where most of it will be turned into LNG and exported.
"This project is absolutely key to the proposed fossil fuel expansion planned for northern Australia," Ms Howey says. It also asked for subpoenas seeking an even wider range of documents from Mr Munkara's lawyers, the EDO. "It becomes an existential crisis for if you've got a powerful and wealthy litigant, who is willing to litigate you to death over these sorts of issues.""Santos is using the potential of seeking costs against third parties … to go after groups who merely offer moral or solidarity support to public interest litigants," Mr Watson says.
For another, Ms Howey says ECNT still needs to engage lawyers to represent its interest in stopping those documents from being handed over via the EDO.Mr Watson believes that might have even been the reason Santos stopped pursuing the documents — to stop the appeal undermining that precedent. She says she's seen elements of this legal strategy before — particularly where the lawyers become the subject of costs orders. She ran one case where the NSW government unsuccessfully pursued the EDO for costs.
"But most of the states adopted laws inhibiting what were called SLAPP suits — Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation — so we don't see many of those anymore." "We decided that it was worth supporting Mr Munkara against the risk of adverse costs, which is a pretty extreme risk if you're a First Nations person from a remote community trying to take on a pretty big fossil fuel giant to assert your land rights in court," says Isabelle Reinecke, the executive director and founder of Grata Fund.Ms Reinecke says the deed spelling out the agreement between Grata Fund and Mr Munkara was provided to Santos several months ago.