Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Emerging Trade Markets) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak about native vegetation and the related issue of property rights. In the 12 years since the New South Wales and Queensland governments introduced legislation to restrict land clearing and stop farmers managing their property in a sustainable way, we have seen a remarkable decline in the productivity not only of individual farms but of the country as a whole. While this may have been done with the best of intentions—it may have been done to garner green preferences, but it may have been done with the best of intentions—time has shown that it was an ill-conceived concept. You cannot improve the biodiversity and environmental situation of land by locking it up.

It has been a little difficult to see the full ramifications of this decision during the period of drought that a lot of areas have had for the last 10 years or so. But in the last week I have spent some time touring the west of New South Wales in an area that will be in the Parkes electorate at the next election—that is, the areas around Cobar, Tottenham, Nyngan and Bourke—and what is very evident is that the areas that have been selectively cleared, with shade lines left, are vibrant, alive, productive and healthy. In contrast, areas that have been locked up, which have high infestations of woody weeds, cypress pine and other regrowth, are quite sterile. The land underneath this timber is bare—there is no grass cover—and with the heavy rain it has been subject to quite serious erosion. This reinforces that it is a fallacy that locking up land is actually good for it. With the focus now on property rights and native vegetation in the context of emissions trading with carbon credits, it would be a very good idea if, as a country and as a parliament, we looked at this policy and reassessed whether it is the best thing to do for our environment.

There is an area in my electorate called the Pilliga Scrub. It was in a scheme known as the Brigalow Belt South Bioregion lockup. Six timber mills were closed down and large tracts of land were locked up, with human contact reduced. Eighteen months after that decision, 50,000 hectares of the Pilliga Scrub burned. The fire burned with such an intensity that it sterilised the ground up to 20 or 30 centimetres below the surface and killed any wildlife that was in there as well as a lot of the valuable vegetation.

The Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee are holding an inquiry that will look at four points. These are:

• any diminution of land asset value and productivity as a result of such laws;
• compensation arrangements to landholders resulting from the imposition of such laws;
• the appropriateness of the method of calculation of asset value in the determination of compensation arrangements; and
• any other related matter.

This is an opportunity for anyone who has been affected by these laws to put in a submission to the Senate inquiry. They have until 17 March to put that submission in, and I would encourage anyone who has anything to say on this to do so. Sometimes, with the best of intentions, laws that have a detrimental effect are put in place. It only becomes a tragedy if that is not realised. There is an opportunity to reverse this—to bring back the productivity of regional Australia and make these areas sustainable into the future.