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Latest figures show this public funding hit more than $3.6m in a single year, according to research from the Institute of Public Affairs covering spending since 2018/19. The EDO last November was reprimanded for distorting evidence in its failed bid to torpedo Santos’s $5.8bn Barossa gas project in the Timor Sea, which is forecast to secure about 350 jobs for 20 years of production at a Darwin LNG facility. But the EDO spearheaded a successful campaign to halt Regis’s $1bn McPhillamys gold mine in western New South Wales. Regis Resources chief executive Jim Beyer told The Daily Telegraph’s Bush Summit his firm was “virtually back to square one” after Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek in August, 2024 effectively blocked the mine because of Indigenous cultural heritage concerns. Institute of Public Affairs research fellow Saxon Davidson branded the EDO “a fringe, activist organisation that is hellbent on shutting down Australian industry and making energy more expensive for mainstream Australians”. “It is completely unacceptable that Australian taxpayers are forced to pay for radical, activist green groups, like the Environmental Defenders Office, whose sole purpose is to put them out of work,” he said. Want to read more of the stories you love on one of our state news websites? Click here to sign up for a free trial and access 12 locked articles on web over 12 weeks. Limits and T&Cs apply. The latest public funding figures, for 2023/24, show federal, ACT, WA, NSW, Queensland and NT governments poured a combined $3,638,617 into the EDO. Queensland and NT governments have since pulled funding. Last November, the EDO was ordered by the Federal Court to pay $9,042,093 to cover all of Santos’s legal costs in defending its failed bid to block the Barossa gas field. The EDO acted as lawyers for three Tiwi Islanders to try to stop Santos installing a pipeline. Justice Natalie Charlesworth said the EDO’s evidence was “so lacking in integrity that no weight can be placed on them”, and that the EDO was “distorting and misrepresenting what the Indigenous informant had said”. This article is part of the Back Australia series, which was supported by Australian Made Campaign, Harvey Norman, Westpac, Bunnings, Coles, TechnologyOne, REA Group, Cadbury, R.M.Williams, Qantas, Vodafone and BHP.
