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On 26 August 2026, Minister Burgoyne tabled the Environment Legislation Amendment (Safe Air) Bill 2026 (NT) (Safe Air Bill) to Parliament and referred the Safe Air Bill to the Legislative Scrutiny Committee (Committee). The Committee’s report is due by 7 October 2026.
The Legislative Scrutiny Committee has called for public submissions by individuals or organisations by Monday 7 September 2026.
Details on how to make and submission and the Committee’s terms of reference are here: Environment Legislation Amendment (Safe Air) Bill 2026 – Northern Territory Government – Legislative Assembly.
The Safe Air Bill’s introduction follows the government’s announcement in June this year that it would introduce legislation to “establish an industry-funded ambient air quality monitoring regime for the Darwin airshed” which would “enable the air quality monitoring network to measure for industrial pollutants for the first time”, with the data to be publicly available online.
This Briefing Note explains what the Safe Air Bill does and what it does not do, as well as our preliminary concerns.
EDO’s Submission to the NT Legislative Scrutiny Committee on the Environment Legislation Amendment (Safe Air) Bill 2026 (NT)
The Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) welcomes the opportunity to make a submission to the Legislative Scrutiny Committee (the Committee) on the Environment Legislation Amendment (Safe Air) Bill 2026 (the Safe Air Bill).
While EDO supports improved air quality monitoring as well as ensuring that the industries whose activities give rise to environmental monitoring requirements contribute to the cost associated with monitoring, we submit the Safe Air Bill should be significantly amended.
Despite what the title suggests, the Safe Air Bill does not protect or safeguard the quality of the air we breathe. The Safe Air Bill creates a power to establish environmental monitoring schemes and provides for industry’s contributions towards the costs of those schemes.
The Safe Air Bill does not include what industrial pollutants must be monitored; nor does it include health-based trigger thresholds, public reporting requirements or a mechanism for reviewing the effectiveness of a monitoring scheme.
In the wake of the October 2025 announcement that Inpex significantly underreported their emissions of volatile organic compounds, including benzene, a known carcinogen, at their Ichthys facility, this Bill should seek to address these issues and deliver meaningful reform.
The Safe Air Bill, in its current form, is a missed opportunity for the NT to become a leader on air toxics monitoring and regulation and to implement the Air Toxics National Environment Protection Measure, committed to by the NT in 2004.
The Safe Air Bill should be substantially amended to establish minimum requirements for any environmental air-monitoring scheme, with regulations being used to provide technical and operational detail rather than to determine the fundamental elements of the regulatory framework.
