Coulton's Catch-up 23/05/10
24-May-2010
Written by: Mark Coulton, MP -
In August 1995 Premier Bob Carr, burdened by his newly-elected government’s political debt to the Greens and the environmental lobby, declared a green war on the State’s farmers. Starting with the controversial SEPP 46 regulations, Carr spent the next decade rolling out a series of environmental reforms aimed at curbing deforestation that would rip away property rights, strip farmers of their ability to earn an income and lock up enormous tracts of viable agricultural land.
I have little doubt the native vegetation laws were enacted with the best of intentions and, indeed, when Carr retired in 2005 he did so declaring them to be a success. However, the unforeseen trail of mental and financial anguish it has left across regional NSW tells a different story.
A Senate Inquiry into the native vegetation laws concluded this month and the State and Federal Governments will now determine whether there is need to amend the legislation. It is an overdue step - yet one which farmers feel will fail them again. The problems, they argue, cannot be conveyed in submissions and town-hall inquiries. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. More than 15 years after the reforms were first enacted, the once fertile and productive western plains are cursed by a cruel irony that has derailed this misguided conservation agenda. The blanket laws on land clearing and vegetation management, coupled with recent rainfall, has seen an explosion in devastating woody weeds and feral species that are wreaking havoc on the region’s natural biodiversity. It is an environmental disaster. The full effect of on the region’s agricultural output is not yet apparent, but it will no doubt add to the $600 million that is already estimated to be lost in productivity every year as a result of these laws.
At the heart of these reforms was the assumption that every inch of native vegetation is precious. This created a situation for farmers across Australia whereby a state government bureaucrat can walk onto privately-owned land and rule how they can manage their property, without any recourse to compensation.
It led to the financial and environmental devastation of entire communities. Towns within the Brigalow and Nandewar belt in northern NSW, for example, were crippled in 2005 when it was ruled that 348,000 hectares of local woodlands were a "biodiversity hotspot" and should be locked up as state forests, forcing the closure of a number of timber mills and the loss of hundreds of jobs. In 2004 a Federal Productivity Commission inquiry found that state native vegetation and biodiversity laws were imposing significant and unnecessary costs on landholders. From stripping farmers of the ability to maintain areas of productive land on their property, to forcing many farmers off their properties through loss of income, to actually contributing to environmental degradation, the Commission’s findings damned the regulations as an abject failure.
Farmers manage more than 70 per cent of the NSW landmass and do so with a commitment to biodiversity conservation, weed and feral animal control and a view that achieving long-term sustainability is the only way to ensure their viability, and that of the land they manage. It is time to acknowledge these laws were a mistake and work towards reversing the damage that has been inflicted on the region’s biodiversity and NSW’s agricultural industry.
The Senate inquiry has recommended the legislation be reviewed to find the right balance between protecting the environment and maximizing agricultural production. Our governments must heed this advice before these undemocratic and inequitable regulations completely strangle our agricultural production and further jeopardise the region’s biodiversity.
