QUEENSLAND’s farmer bashing environment minister Steven Miles’ competence has been brought into question after is was revealed a cattle property in the process of being seized by the Palaszczuk government was wrongly identified as national park.
Biggenden landholders Sharon and Rob Lohse used freedom of information laws to obtain documents showing the necessary assessment of her family's leasehold country was not carried out before it was turned into a national park.
Ms Lohse said she had received more than 1000 pages of information from three of the four departments she had contacted.
However, it appeared delaying tactics had been employed to deny her access to papers from national parks, she said.
“We were told the information would not be released because it was commercially sensitive,” Mrs Lohse said.
“That was nonsense. I’m now expecting more than 1000 pages of material from national parks that I expect will provide even more information on how badly this process has been handled.”
Some 83 leases are understood to be affected, although it is understood a number of landholders have already been evicted. Ms Lohse has called for both an apology and compensation for affected families.
Even without the national parks material, Dr Miles has been forced to act saying he would send an “independent person” from the Queensland Herbarium to review the Lohse’s lease. The Queensland Herbarium is a section of the Department of Environment for which the minister is responsible.
“We are not comfortable with that at all,” Mrs Lohse said. “We don’t know who it is and we have no idea if they are independent. We certainly don’t need to go down that track. We need a way forward.”
Mrs Lohse said she was pleased Dr Miles had recognised that due process had not been followed by the previous Labor government and was revising procedures and current policy in respect to the dedication of grazing leases to national park and the revoking of these leases.
“We should never have been determined to a national park,” she said.
“In the past 12 years we have had to live with the stress and consequences of that.
“Banks have only been able to lend based on unfairly reduced and comprised value of this asset.
“The reality is the former LNP government set up a mechanism that would have allowed this lease to be converted to freehold. We applied but it rejected because of the illegal actions of the Beattie government, which stopped that process from proceeding.
“It’s now time for apologies and to start talking compensation for 12 years of restrictive trade.”
The Lohses say the loss of the 1400 hectare lease located 55km south of Biggenden would cost them their entire cattle business. The 100 year old lease is not only home to all of the Lohse’s infrastructure including their home, sheds and cattle yards but the frontage country also provided the only access to 4000ha of other grazing country.
Mrs Lohse said her family had been subject to ongoing harassment by Queensland government officials, including unannounced visits, late night phone calls, and other threatening behaviour.
Dr Miles blamed the former LNP government for the confusion. However, the process of evicting farming families gained traction under the then Beattie and later Bligh governments, which went to extreme lengths to paint Queensland farmers as environmental vandals.
The end game was to convert 5 per cent of the land mass of Queensland to national parks in a bid to secure green votes for Labor in inner-city Brisbane seats. Both Dr Miles (Mount Coot-tha) and deputy premier Jackie Trad (South Brisbane) rely on green preferences to hold their seats and have maintained strong public support for extreme green groups at the expense of farmers.
Property Rights Australia chairman Dale Stiller said it was nonsense that grazing leases that had been operated as cattle stations for more than a century should be reclassified as national park.
“It is the very hard work, dedication and particularly the management of these leases by farming families that have preserved the very conservation qualities that Steven Miles wants to take away,” Mr Stiller said.
“Surely even Steven Miles has the mental capacity to understand that it is the very operation of a cattle operation and the control of weeds, fuel loads and pest animals that ensures the conservation values of these often 100 year old-plus grazing leases.
“Once that management is lost, so will the conservation values.”
Opposition natural resources spokesman Andrew Cripps said a review should be held into the 83 leases in question. “Unfortunately we have a minister who puts Labor politics ahead of genuine, objective conservation decisions,” Mr Cripps said.