Greens and environment groups have condemned NSW Labor for failing to repeal laws that its own environment minister warned in 2016, ‘will result in significant increases in land clearing and the destruction of precious native vegetation in NSW’.
Greens MLC Sue Higginson said in a media release, ’The NSW Statewide Landcover and Tree Study (SLATS) data released recently has revealed a staggering 16 per cent jump in land clearing rates in 2024, following a 40 per cent jump in 2023’.
In a media release from 21 July, the NSW Labor government admitted, ‘unallocated land clearing remains significantly high, and in 2024, accounted for 60 per cent of all clearing.’
They say, ‘The results highlight the ongoing need to conserve and restore native vegetation. To address this, the NSW Government is progressing reforms under the NSW Plan for Nature, including strengthening biodiversity laws, expanding conservation programs and supporting private land conservation.’
‘The NSW Government has commissioned the Natural Resources Commission to provide advice on options to better protect and manage native vegetation in rural areas. This advice will help shape reforms.
‘The NSW Government is continuing to work closely with environment, industry, community and First Nations stakeholders to design and implement these reforms to deliver enduring benefits for nature and people across NSW’.
Govt backflip?
From the Hansard record from 9 November 2016, then opposition Labor MP Penny Sharp was critical of the Liberal and Nationals coalition’s environment laws.
She said, ‘The Biodiversity Conservation Bill 2016 and the Local Land Services Amendment Bill 2016 ignore the advice of scientists, including the Government’s own expert scientist on biodiversity. These bills ignore the advice of environmentalists who have backed up their contributions with scientific and evidence-based submissions’. She also said the only supporters of the laws were farming lobbyists and ‘pretty much no-one else – not even many members of the Liberal Party’.
She concluded with ‘Members on this side of the chamber do not trust the Government and we do not trust the Minister because time and again we have found the Government untrustworthy when it comes to protecting our environment’.
Higginson added, ‘The increase is fuelled largely by an increase in clearing of non-woody vegetation, with 57,190 hectares of non-woody vegetation and 24,103 hectares of woody vegetation cleared. Environmental experts have been calling for urgent action and the scrapping of the Land Management Code’s “Invasive Native Species” category’.
She said, ‘Half of the current Labor Cabinet lined up to slam these laws when they were introduced, so what is stopping them from fixing them? “We have seen another staggering jump in land clearing rates under the Minns Labor Government, in total land clearing is much higher than it was when the Liberals and Nationals left office, ‘Astoundingly, New South Wales is clearing 275 Sydney CBDs worth of vegetation every year, and our deforestation rates are on par with Indonesia’.
The NSW Greens have announced they will introduce a private members’ bill to stop runaway land clearing when parliament resumes. They are:
1. Introduce prohibitions on clearing threatened ecological communities, threatened species habitats and riparian areas
2. End the regime of self assessable codes
3. Repeal the Invasive Native Species exemptions which allow broadscale land clearing
4. Fix the biodiversity offsets system enforcing these prohibitions and requiring offsets to be like for like as the system intended.
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