If a tree falls in the Queensland outback during an election, does any voter care? If you happen to be a besieged koala, you’d definitely hope so.
Queensland farmers suspected to have defied tree clearing controls in 'deforestation frenzy'
With the Queensland election upon us, it has become clear that the rights and wrongs of clearing Queensland’s forests and woodlands have been a polarising issue with all major players releasing dramatically different policies.
The scene was set for this debate when, only weeks before the election, shocking new independent data was released that showed that 400,000 hectares of bush were cleared in Queensland during the year 2015–16.
This is the equivalent to a Gabba cricket pitch-sized area of forest cleared every three minutes every day, all year. Experts from WWF Australia have estimated that 45 million animals were killed as a result of the clearing in 2015through 2016 alone.
Last week it was also revealed that an astounding 945,755 hectares of bush have been targeted, between 20 July 2016 to 30 September 2017, for clearing following a detailed analysis of notifications from landholders received by the Queensland government.
This onslaught was triggered by changes made to the previously stringent vegetation management laws by the Newman government in 2013. These changes were made at the urging of Agforce, the peak agricultural and beef industry lobby group.
The Palaszczuk government attempted to rein in the worst of the clearing last year but its attempts at reform were torpedoed by the combined opposition of the LNP and the crossbenches.
Given this form, it is not surprising that again Labor has put a big ticket policy on the table for the consideration of voters.
Released only a day after the remarkable Adani policy backflip, the Labor policy is built on two foundations. The first is to stop the actual clearing of high conservation value forests and woodlands and the second is to invest $500m in a fund that will encourage farmers and other landholders to both protect and also replant forests to gain financial benefits through carbon farming.
The latter initiative is in fact consistent with, and complementary to, the Turnbull government’s $2bn emission reductions fund, which has seen farmers funded to keep their trees to help reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The LNP in Queensland however has no interest in this sort of policy, despite it being championed by their federal colleagues. The LNP is silent on issue of carbon farming and maintains support for the existing laws, which have delivered the highest rates of land clearing in a generation.
This approach must be causing significant friction within the LNP. Brisbane-based members philosophically aligned to the old Liberal party know that this policy position is poison in their western suburbs Brisbane heartland. Before the LNP merger, the Liberals voted with Peter Beattie’s Labor government to dramatically reduce the rates of land clearing in the 2000s.
Unfortunately the sniff of ministerial leather has forced the ex-Liberals to do the bidding of the ex-Nationals who are spooked and under siege in rural Queensland.
The party doing the spooking is of course One Nation and it is perhaps unsurprising that the Hanson party wants all land clearing laws abolished.
The ghost of Joh Bjelke-Petersen lives on in Hanson’s DNA and her policies speak to the distant past, not the future. Sadly the LNP seems intent in following her down that time tunnel.
While Hanson’s position is predictable, polling commissioned by the Wilderness Society in late 2016 demonstrated that One Nation voters – just like voters from across all party lines – supported strong laws to end land clearing once they understood the size and scale of the clearing taking place across Queensland.
Queensland farmers suspected to have defied tree clearing controls in 'deforestation frenzy'
With the Queensland election upon us, it has become clear that the rights and wrongs of clearing Queensland’s forests and woodlands have been a polarising issue with all major players releasing dramatically different policies.
The scene was set for this debate when, only weeks before the election, shocking new independent data was released that showed that 400,000 hectares of bush were cleared in Queensland during the year 2015–16.
This is the equivalent to a Gabba cricket pitch-sized area of forest cleared every three minutes every day, all year. Experts from WWF Australia have estimated that 45 million animals were killed as a result of the clearing in 2015through 2016 alone.
Last week it was also revealed that an astounding 945,755 hectares of bush have been targeted, between 20 July 2016 to 30 September 2017, for clearing following a detailed analysis of notifications from landholders received by the Queensland government.
This onslaught was triggered by changes made to the previously stringent vegetation management laws by the Newman government in 2013. These changes were made at the urging of Agforce, the peak agricultural and beef industry lobby group.
The Palaszczuk government attempted to rein in the worst of the clearing last year but its attempts at reform were torpedoed by the combined opposition of the LNP and the crossbenches.
Given this form, it is not surprising that again Labor has put a big ticket policy on the table for the consideration of voters.
Released only a day after the remarkable Adani policy backflip, the Labor policy is built on two foundations. The first is to stop the actual clearing of high conservation value forests and woodlands and the second is to invest $500m in a fund that will encourage farmers and other landholders to both protect and also replant forests to gain financial benefits through carbon farming.
The latter initiative is in fact consistent with, and complementary to, the Turnbull government’s $2bn emission reductions fund, which has seen farmers funded to keep their trees to help reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The LNP in Queensland however has no interest in this sort of policy, despite it being championed by their federal colleagues. The LNP is silent on issue of carbon farming and maintains support for the existing laws, which have delivered the highest rates of land clearing in a generation.
This approach must be causing significant friction within the LNP. Brisbane-based members philosophically aligned to the old Liberal party know that this policy position is poison in their western suburbs Brisbane heartland. Before the LNP merger, the Liberals voted with Peter Beattie’s Labor government to dramatically reduce the rates of land clearing in the 2000s.
Unfortunately the sniff of ministerial leather has forced the ex-Liberals to do the bidding of the ex-Nationals who are spooked and under siege in rural Queensland.
The party doing the spooking is of course One Nation and it is perhaps unsurprising that the Hanson party wants all land clearing laws abolished.
The ghost of Joh Bjelke-Petersen lives on in Hanson’s DNA and her policies speak to the distant past, not the future. Sadly the LNP seems intent in following her down that time tunnel.
While Hanson’s position is predictable, polling commissioned by the Wilderness Society in late 2016 demonstrated that One Nation voters – just like voters from across all party lines – supported strong laws to end land clearing once they understood the size and scale of the clearing taking place across Queensland.
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