90 Time November 8/November 15, 2021
the world’s fight against climate change. Including its
fossil-fuel exports, the country’s footprint is about 5%
of global emissions—despite having just about 0.33%
of the world’s population—according to the advocacy
group Climate Analytics.
But Australia’s nascent green-energy revolution may
already be leaving Aboriginal people behind. “Some of
us aren’t transitioning out of anything,” says Karrina
Nolan, a descendant of the Yorta Yorta people and the
executive director of Original Power. “We haven’t even
enjoyed some of the benefits other people have had
from coal mining for the last century. Some of our peo-
ple don’t even have power.”
More than 40% of Australia’s landmass is under
Native Title, a law recognizing Aboriginal people have
varying rights to live or hunt on the land. The relation-
ship with the land is a fundamental part of Aboriginal
identity. Modern Australian law, however, takes a less
holistic view; Native Title is not the same as ownership,
and Aboriginal people typically can’t veto proposed
projects on native-titled land that they don’t want. De-
velopers are required only to negotiate “in good faith”
for six months to try to reach an agreement with the
community. Sometimes, voluntary agreements include
millions of dollars in compensation and other benefits
like guaranteed jobs and investment in local infra-
structure. But in other cases, they do not. Further, these
are entirely voluntary—projects can proceed apace even
if a community holding Native Title never agrees.
The legal situation reflects a stark imbalance of
power between resource companies, which are some
of the richest and most politically connected entities
in Australia, and Aboriginal people. Peter Yu, a Yawuru
man who is the former executive director of the Kim-
berley Land Council, an Aboriginal land-rights orga-
nization in northwest Australia, notes that Aboriginal
people make up only around 3% of the Australian popu-
lation: “We offer very little in terms of that in a political,
parliamentary sense. So, we’re vulnerable and power-
less in that regard.”
In addition, despite some gains after generations of
discrimination, Aboriginal people as a group earn about
40% less and face unemployment rates over three times
as high as non-Aboriginal Australians. Outcomes are
especially bad in remote communities, where there is
less economic opportunity. There are efforts to change
that, but Aboriginal people especially remain margin-
alized and often don’t have the business, legal or finan-
cial experience—or the money— to effectively negotiate
with large powerful companies.
Negotiations between private companies and Ab-
original groups are often facilitated by local land coun-
cils, organizations that help Aboriginal groups manage
their traditional lands. When large companies offer
royalty payments to get local buy-in, it can be enticing
for such councils, given that they are often tasked with
acting on behalf of communities without other revenue
sources. But even when companies promise things like
jobs and to boost the local economy, experts say, they
often overpromise and underdeliver.
Sun Cable’s project is ambitious: to pair the world’s
largest solar farm with the world’s most powerful bat-
tery, and transport the resulting power to Asia via the
world’s longest undersea cable. And there’s been a lot of
hype about the benefits it will have—for some. For ex-
ample, during an Oct. 20 press conference, Eva Lawler,
the Northern Territory minister for renewables and en-
ergy, said the project had already resulted in $1.7 million
in spending at 70 businesses over the last financial year
in Darwin, where Sun Cable is building a solar-panel-
manufacturing facility. The Sun Cable project, officially
dubbed the Australia-Asia PowerLink (AAPowerLink),
she said, “will be a huge boost to the Territory’s economy.”
But those promises and press releases stand in con-
trast to the vague commitments that locals and activ-
ists say have been made to provide jobs and other ben-
efits in remote communities—demonstrating that the
company may be more focused on securing buy-in
from government officials and getting the project,
which they say is in embryonic stages, off the ground,
than on the impact it will have at the local level. When
asked how she’d like to see major projects like the
AAPowerLink benefit remote communities, Lawler
said the Sun Cable project is “a very different project
to what we are talking about, necessarily, in our re-
mote communities. In our remote communities at this
stage, the demands are very small. The Sun Cable proj-
ect is a huge project. That’s more about—that’s private
enterprise, but that’s more about focusing on export-
ing energy to Asia.”
Sun Cable CEO David Griffin said in an Oct. 25 email
that the company is committed to comprehensive en-
gagement with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal stake-
holders, that it is working on a benefit plan that will
include things like local procurement and workforce
training, and that it is collaborating with land councils,
which have a statutory responsibility to identify Native
Title holders where proposed projects might take place.
He said the company will seek to put in place voluntary
agreements with impacted Traditional Owners provid-
ing “enduring positive outcomes.” “This process takes
time to identify, reach and consult with all those Tra-
ditional Owners affected by the project and the multi-
ple communities and interest groups involved,” he said.
The Northern Land Council, which represents
some Aboriginal groups whose land will be im-
pacted by the project, said in an email that it would
“facilitate consultations” about such an agreement,
but declined to comment on who from the commu-
nities should be approached about proposed proj-
ects or what had been done so far. Despite the prom-
ise of benefits and engagement, over a dozen people
who told TIME and the Special Broadcasting Service
in late September they have ancestral connections
to land in Powell Creek also said they had not been