INNISPLAIN farmer Ross Drynan will join protesters at a Brisbane rally today to fight against the proposed land clearing laws at Parliament House.
Mr Drynan says he wants to send a message to city people about the further struggles farmers would face if these laws passed, while urging the LNP to be more proactive.
He said the debate had been going on for 20-odd years and it was time for people to realise the laws were unreasonable and not balanced.
“There is absolutely nothing rational about forcing landholders who have already invested significant capital in clearing and improving land for Queensland's agricultural and pastoral industries to wilfully destroy their already made improvements through prohibitions on the control of the inevitable regrowth,” Mr Drynan said.
The former agricultural economics professor said there were people who did not think beyond the animals’ wellbeing and the repercussions.
“We don’t want to kill koalas unnecessarily but… at what cost will it be for achieving some of these ideals?” he said.
“Nobody in the city is paying a cost for keeping these trees, the farmers are paying a huge cost...through not being able to use their land.”
Scenic Rim MP Jon Krause said he would be standing “shoulder to shoulder with farmers” at the rally against the Labor laws.
“It’s important for people to have their voice heard, to let people in Brisbane know that these laws proposed by Labor will hurt rural and regional Queensland,” he said.
“The biggest local issue with these laws is that they have the potential to lock up land….and will bury farmers in fees and charges and bureaucratic paperwork just to do what farmers must do to make a living, manage their vegetation.”
Natural Resources Minister Anthony Lynham introduced the tree-clearing reforms, telling Parliament that they would reinstate a responsible vegetation management and protection framework for Queensland.
“These laws will protect our climate, our wildlife and our Great Barrier Reef, and the tens of thousands of jobs that depend on the Reef,” he said.
“Landholders will still be able to maintain their land and clear fodder trees to feed their stock, and the majority of landholders will continue to do the right thing, as they do now.”
Environment Minister Leeanne Enoch said it would maintain biodiversity, reduce land degradation, protect water quality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support the sustainable use of land.
“If the current clearing rate continues, it will drive native wildlife to extinction, put jobs reliant on the Great Barrier Reef at risk, drive up Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, and prevent Australia from meeting its international climate commitments,” she said.
Among the changes, the proposed laws will:
- ban broadscale clearing of remnant vegetation for agriculture
- expand the “high value regrowth” that is protected from vegetation that hasn’t been cleared since the beginning of 1990 – 28 year-old trees – to 15-year-old trees. This means an extra 232,000 ha of trees will be protected.
- increase, up to almost treble, the maximum penalties courts could impose for illegal clearing to more than half-a-million-dollars
- give compliance officers more powers and enforcement tools
- require farmers to get approval to thin vegetation
- still allow farmers to harvest fodder trees to feed livestock.