{"id":65285,"date":"2026-08-05T02:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T02:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/65285\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T02:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T02:08:10","slug":"high-court-rules-in-favour-of-native-title-holders-fighting-northern-territory-water-licence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/65285\/","title":{"rendered":"High Court rules in favour of native title holders fighting Northern Territory water licence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Native title holders from Central Australia have won their fight to assert cultural rights over an aquifer located on their lands.<\/p>\n

The High Court of Australia today decided in favour of the Mpwerempwer Aboriginal Corporation (MAC), which had challenged a plan to turn thousands of hectares on Singleton Station, south of Tennant Creek, into an irrigated horticulture business.<\/p>\n

The station’s lessees, Fortune Agribusiness, plan to grow mandarins, table grapes, avocados, muskmelons, and other fruits.<\/p>\n

The endeavour would transform the cattle property into one of the nation’s biggest fruit farms, requiring 40,000 megalitres (40 billion litres) of water every year once fully developed.<\/p>\n

That demand was at the heart of the appeal brought by MAC, which submitted that water was only available from an underground aquifer accessed by bores on the property.<\/p>\n

It claimed water, and sites traditionally associated with access to or use of water, have significance for traditional occupants of arid lands.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The traditional owners say they are concerned the licence will lead to the destruction of too many sacred water sites. (Supplied: Anna Miers, Central Land Council)<\/p>\n

Claim water licence had not been lawfully granted<\/p>\n

The 2020 application by Fortune for the 30-year water licence was described by the Department of Environment at the time as being “possibly the largest volume application in a single water resource by a single entity in Australia”.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for MAC claimed the water licence had not been lawfully granted because the minister in charge did not properly justify granting the water licence for 30 years rather than the standard 10-year period.<\/p>\n

They also argued Aboriginal cultural values had not been considered in the making of that decision, and that native title holders had been denied procedural fairness by decision makers.<\/p>\n

MAC, which is made up of traditional owners and native title holders from four Aboriginal landholding groups, had failed in their bid to overturn the licence in challenges heard by the Northern Territory Supreme Court and Court of Appeal over the last four years.<\/p>\n

The native title and traditional owners said they were concerned the licence would lead to the destruction of too many sacred water sites and affect native plants and animals that depend on the water.<\/p>\n

In February, traditional owner Valerie Ngapangardi Curtis said the licence would be damaging in multiple ways.<\/p>\n

“If they take too much water, it’s going to damage our country, it’s going to damage all our plants and animals, and it’s going to damage our culture as well and dreaming and storyline,” she said.\"Singleton<\/p>\n

The NT government said in its submissions the law does not require the decision-maker to consider the impact on Aboriginal cultural values. (ABC Alice Springs: Samantha Jonscher)<\/p>\n

Minister denied MAC procedural fairness, court finds<\/p>\n

For its part, the Northern Territory government and Fortune had argued the minister responsible was not legally obliged to consider special circumstances, including any cultural values impact assessment.<\/p>\n

But today, the High Court unanimously agreed the water licence had not been lawfully granted by the Northern Territory government.<\/p>\n

It found the minister had not properly satisfied circumstances that justified the extended 30-year licence, and that the minister had denied MAC procedural fairness in not providing a reasonable opportunity to make its case about conditions imposed on the licence.<\/p>\n

The decision means the water licence will be quashed and the process referred back to the minister responsible, who will also have to consider the territory’s environmental approvals processes associated with the site.<\/p>\n

The NT government must also pay the costs of MAC’s appeal, but limited only to those that went towards its arguments about procedural fairness, with the Supreme Court to determine other costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Native title holders from Central Australia have won their fight to assert cultural rights over an aquifer located…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4817,80793,22,21,2184,25291,80791,32264,17768,37327,5669,28443,24005,5116,80792,10215,1938,78163,19345,30914,10214,80794],"class_list":["post-65285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-act","tag-aquifier","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-canberra","tag-challenge","tag-fortune-agribusiness-funds-management","tag-fruit","tag-groundwater","tag-growing","tag-high-court","tag-horticulture","tag-licence","tag-local-stories","tag-mpwerempwer-aboriginal-corporation","tag-native-title","tag-northern-territory","tag-singleton","tag-station","tag-tennant-creek","tag-traditional-owners","tag-underground"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}