"Last week the Auditor-General stated that farmers have escaped land clearing prosecutions because the State Government had ‘problems with meeting the evidence requirements’ under NSW native vegetation laws,” said a spokesperson for the NSW Regional Community Survival Group, Doug Menzies.
A media release from the group issued earlier today began:
"Farming families are demanding an official apology from the NSW Auditor-General who last week implied that farmers should have been prosecuted for clearing 30,000 hectares of land in 2005.
... The Regional Community Survival Group is made up of farmers from western NSW who are fed up with bureaucratic and nonsensical laws that are preventing farmers from controlling infestations of woody weeds that have invaded up to 20 million hectares (an area three times the size of Tasmania) in western NSW.
“The Auditor-General implies that farming families have carried out illegal land clearing yet in his own report he clearly states that no prosecutions in relation to land clearing were successful when contested in court between 1998 and 2005.
“I was led to believe that a foundation stone of the Australian legal system was the benefit of the presumption of innocence until proven guilty by evidence presented in a court of law?
“By implying that farmers have escaped prosecution the Auditor-General has effectively branded farming families as having engaged in illegal land clearing activities – an outrageous suggestion,” said Mr Menzies.
The Regional Community Survival Group is concerned that the comments of the Auditor-General could prejudice land clearing cases currently before the NSW Land and Environment Court.
“We demand an apology from the Auditor-General and seek clarification from the NSW Attorney-General on how the comments of the Auditor-General could potentially prejudice land clearing cases currently before the courts.
“We also have serious concerns on how diligently the Auditor-General investigated the issue of land clearing in NSW.
“The Auditor-General obtained the vast majority of his information from government agencies that are pandering to Sydney-based green groups,” said Mr Menzies.
----------------------
Read the full report -- which does seem to ignore the concept of 'presumption of innocence' -- published by the NSW Auditor-General and titled 'Regulating the Clearing of Native Vegetation: Follow-up of 2002 Performance Audit' by clicking here.
Michael, Luke and pals should take shares in google - their credibilty depends on it.
Michael, its just as well we've had some clearing, so farmers can produce some straw. Otherwise you'd be in trouble, 'cause, boy, you're sure clutching at some there.
Oh and maybe the dust storms encouraged by overgrazing and Mulga pulling also influenced the high turbidity in the waterways on the other side of the dividing range too.
"Michael, would you please tell me, where mulga could have been pulled, in catchment that had any flow to the reef."
"Just a minor oversight there, Hasbeen, but whats a thousand km and a great dividing range to people like Michael. If urban majority perception must prevail then, damn it, the Burdekin will just have to flow via St George on its way to the reef."
------------------------
Lol, oops, point taken. I'm not a Queenslander.. I didn't think Mulga, Burdekin and Reef should be used in the same sentence, but I did a quick search and found the words used together in dozens of documents, so I thought I'll give it a go.
However the Mulga pulling would have caused excessive turbidity and soil loss in the inland catchments too.
You've had too many chardonnays. They have yet to build Paradise - it's the Burdekin Falls Dam holding back Lake Dalrymple. The most erosive soils are below the dam. Have a look at all the sediment work over the last 5 years including Catchment Hydrology and CSIRO.
Dead porkers baloney - the coral records match the previous flood history for the known part of the record. It's a great match and a classic bit of work.
Don't worry about the reef for now - think what a degraded shit land condition this great grazing resource is becoming. Been documented and ongoing since the 1960s. And any tree clearing varmits are only going to degrade what they clear anyway.
So if you are going to clear land - do they look after it. Answer no. This isn't sustainable forestry Ian - this is resource mining.
I hope you will be wearing appropriate safety gear and practice chemcical safety when spraying. Have you recently calibrated your rig ? 🙂
Ian,
You really should read things in context. My comment "A person clearing land for the purpose of growing crops or running cattle is unlikely to consider that they are destroying their land" was addressed to Schiller, and was part of a line of reasoning. It cannot be taken to indicate that I consider clearing land to consitute destruction.
My second referenced comment "If society as a whole has a different priority, and if that priority is to prevail, there need to be ways of preventing the land owners from substituting their own view" is a syllogism. The conclusion follows if the two premises are true. However, I offered no opionion on whether the premises are indeed true.
People like you who take a hollistic approach to reading come up with responses that are as irritating as they are uninformative. I will not respond to you further on this.
Sylvia.
Just a minor oversight there, Hasbeen, but whats a thousand km and a great dividing range to people like Michael. If urban majority perception must prevail then, damn it, the Burdekin will just have to flow via St George on its way to the reef.
And Luke, claiming most sediment comes from below the Paradise Dam smells like a long dead dead porker to me. Again, name your source and please explain why.
But it is no surprise that the only coral cores we ever hear about are the ones in the discharge from our biggest catchment. But even that carefully chosen data needs a relevance check. Because even if turbidity doubled it still tells us nothing about where this sits in relation to the point at which coral will die from excess turbidity.
That was my point in mentioning the historical high points in the 1940's. That silt load clearly did not kill the coral concerned as it is still there. And even though the Burdekin may be the largest catchment flowing into the reef this is by no means matched by its influence on the reef itself. The cores that register the changes are within a few km of the coast and the current remains inshore for many km along the coast with minimal fusion with the rest of the reef.
But thats enough for you to grasp in one go fellas. It is national tree day on Sunday and I can't think of a more appropriate activity than to spend the weekend spraying all the young eucalypt seedlings that we used to encourage and tend, back in the days when our rights were respected.