The public has given a huge thumbs down to the Baird government’s plans to weaken environmental controls and accelerate land clearing.
At last count, 5,465 people lodged a submission opposing the package, [1] more than the total number of submissions (for and against) lodged in response to the highly controversial draft Planning Bill in 2013, which failed to pass the parliament. [2]
Submissions on the draft Biodiversity Conservation Bill and the Local Land Services Amendment Bill closed on Tuesday last week after a brief eight-week public comment period.
This is a massive community response that eclipses even the community backlash against the Coalition government’s proposed changes to planning laws in 2013, when community opposition rendered passage of the bill impossible.
This shows there is very strong community opposition to Mr Baird’s plans to weaken environmental protections and accelerate land clearing for the benefit of developers and big agribusiness.
In the interests of transparency and accountability, we call on the government to make the submissions public as soon as possible.
Our analysis of submissions opposing the bills found the top concerns were: • Loss of wildlife, soil health, water quality, and more salinity as a result of weaker laws.
• The lack of ‘no-go zones’ where high-quality wildlife habitat is protected from land clearing.
• The broadening of ‘self-assessable’ codes that let landholders clear trees with little oversight.
• The wider use of ‘biodiversity offsets’ that let landholders clear trees if they pay money into a fund.
• The removal of a legal requirement to show that land clearing would ‘maintain or improve biodiversity’ before approval is given.
People are convinced Premier Baird’s plans are bad for our threatened wildlife and the communities that rely on healthy soils, waterways and bushland for their survival.
These views are strongly supported by leading scientists and the whole of the conservation movement in NSW. [3]
Given the well-informed concerns of the scientific community and the strength of community opposition, Mr Baird should withdraw his flawed package.
He should either give Local Land Services the resources to work with farmers to make the Native Vegetation Act work better, or go back to the drawing board and develop effective protections for nature within a strong framework for sustainable agriculture in NSW.
Scrapping the Native Vegetation Act and Threatened Species Conservation Act will not help nature in NSW. It would simply further the short-term financial interests of big agribusiness and property developers at the expense of wildlife and communities.
Kate Smolski , Nature Conservation Council CEO
Refrences:
[1] Planning Bill (2013) 4,926 submissions. http://apo.org.au/files/Resource/nsw_white_paper_feedback_report_2013.pdf, p10.
[2] This was the total number of submissions made by supporters of the Stand Up For Nature alliance, which has been campaigning to retain strong land-clearing controls. It is likely many more submissions opposing the governments proposed changes have been made by people who have not informed SUFN. The government has not yet made public all the submissions received from all sides of the debate.
[3] Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists warns Baird’s biodiversity laws will “increase the rate of species extinctions” http://www.nature.org.au/news/2016/06/wentworth-group-warns-new-laws-will-increase-the-rate-of-species-extinctions/
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