Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

However, it is becoming increasingly evident that the consultation process on these reforms has been hijacked by conservation organisations, groups like the Pew Charitable Trusts group, who are more concerned with turning the WA's bushland and outback into a giant carbon farm and nature reserve rather than supporting a vibrant pastoral industry that provides jobs and opportunity for pastoral families and remote communities now and into the future.

Ultimately, their vision is one where taxpayers fund land stewardship programs in the outback rather than encouraging enterprise. We have seen in other parts of Australia the economic folly of locking up productive land in the name of conservation, without pausing to consider what that might actually mean for the economic viability of regional communities themselves.