PROPERTY Rights Australia says the Palaszczuk government has failed to grasp that the Vegetation Management Act was not repealed but amended. DALE STILLER writes:
IT is most concerning that senior members of the Palaszczuk government, including the Premier herself, have failed to grasp that the Vegetation Management Act was not repealed but amended under the LNP and amended modestly at that.
Unlike the over-the-top approach taken in resource legislation, the Newman government amendments to the VMA were restrained, responsible and restored basic tenets of our legal system; civil rights that the wider community take for granted but had been denied to landowners.
Queensland was the first jurisdiction in Australia to reverse the onus of proof and it happened under the Beattie Labor government's Vegetation Management Act.
The current government should be very wary of pressure by various "green groups" which are continually being proved to be lacking in substance.
Activists with an environmental agenda have lost no time in getting in the government's ear with the incorrect notion that the VMA had been repealed and land clearing is out of control. Published articles by a group of academics calling themselves "concerned scientists" show little scientific integrity and deceptive selection of the facts.
WWF in its latest Living Forests report devotes a whole chapter to the use of "projections" to forecast a resulting deforestation from changes to legislation.
WWF believes that your brigalow suckers are "critically important" and without a word about compensation of production loss to the landowner states the desire to see brigalow regrowth to mature for 30 years to provide wildlife habitat. Typically Dr Tim Seelig, Queensland campaign manager for the Wilderness Society makes gross exaggerations such as: "The LNP substantially weakened land clearing controls in Queensland, resulting in a return to large scale clearing and an impending tree clearing crisis on a massive scale."
It is rather inconvenient for them that a scientific paper, 'Recent reversal in loss of global terrestrial biomass' that showed vegetation in Australia had actually increased with the encroachment of trees into grassland being a key factor.
Dr Bill Burrows in a 2013 paper, "Bushland at risk of continued tree and shrub thickening in Queensland" wrote,
"Many other land types were, and remain, subject to increased "thickening" of the over-storey or sub-canopy tree and shrub cover, or both, over time. Likewise trees are actively encroaching on some native grasslands. Examples of this changing structure and composition of the vegetation include mulga thickening in country east of the Warrego River, gidgee encroachment onto Mitchell grasslands , increased eucalypt cover in the Desert Uplands and Central Highlands/Burdekin Catchment and tea tree invasion of grasslands in Cape York. Even National Parks and reserves abutting grazing land are subject to ongoing tree thickening e.g. the disappearing grassy balds of the Bunya Mountains, acacias invading grasslands on Moorinya N.P. and rainforest invading wet sclerophyll forest in the wet tropics."
To reverse the current strict guidelines already in place for tree clearing in Queensland will not deliver the best outcomes for Queenslanders and as seen in the past, replacing cooperation with coercion and heavy-handed administration creates more problems and is not effective or productive.
PRA has been aware and is highly concerned that in recent months of DNR&M staff appear to have been given directives to find someone to hold up as an errant example to what would appear to be an excuse to review the current tree clearing legislation to appease election promises made to green groups. PRA strongly advises landowners that if departmental staff approaches them on a land clearing matter to immediately seek legal advice. In these circumstances usual country hospitality and openness should not apply. Rural Queensland does not need a repeat of the full extent of the poor archaic Beattie Labor government legislation that was enforced in a vindictive, punitive manner.
