Seven conventional house owners have requested a dozen Australian and worldwide banks to rethink a $US1 billion mortgage to Santos for its Barossa offshore fuel challenge and a Darwin LNG challenge.
The six Tiwi Islanders and a member of Larrakia Nation lodged grievances with ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, NAB and Westpac and eight worldwide banks over the loans, an activist group supporting them introduced on Tuesday.
Other banks receiving the complaints are ING, DNB Bank, Citigroup, Royal Bank of Canada, DBS Bank, MUFG, SMBC and Mizuho.
Equity Generation Lawyers, a regulation agency dedicated to local weather change, filed the complaints with the banks on behalf the normal house owners, requesting a response by May 16.
The criticism filed with ANZ depends on the financial institution’s grievance framework it launched in November 2021 to answer human rights complaints. The mechanism was arrange after ANZ’s Cambodian arm accredited a mortgage to a sugar firm that forcibly seized land from 681 households in collusion with state authorities.
“By entering into loans to finance the Barossa project, the banks are contributing to the immense impacts of this project on our clients’ ancient and continuing spiritual and traditional connections to their ancestral lands and waters,” stated Vidhya Karnamadakala, an affiliate at Equity Generation Lawyers
“Banks appear to be breaching their own human rights policies. Banks cannot fund the Barossa gas project without the consent of our clients and the Tiwi communities.”
ANZ has been contacted for remark.
Santos says it has since 2016 consulted with the normal house owners concerning the Barossa fuel challenge, which it calls an necessary fuel challenge for the nation that may improve jobs and exports.
The challenge, which includes drilling 140km north of the Tiwi Islands, is about half accomplished and set to ship first fuel in 2025.
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
