Crown lands off the table until 2015

Stakeholders expected to see new laws, which could contain radical changes to management and control of public land, come up for debate before the end of this year.

However, a spokesman for the Department of Trade and Investment said legislation would not be tabled until well into next year, despite the release of a White Paper on proposed reform in early February.

“It is not proposed to introduce new legislation before the State election,” the spokesman said.

More consultation with stakeholders is on the cards and plans are in place to trial several controversial new management arrangements.

Farmers would be at the heart of some proposed changes.

Local Land Services will review ownership and management arrangements for travelling stock routes, which could potentially place them under control of local councils.

The department said it would investigate “future opportunities” to convert western lands grazing leases to freehold.

The most wide-ranging reform could come from the Local Land Pilot

with four councils, to investigate if ownership and management of crown land could be handed to local councils.

Lands Minister Kevin Humphries said he wanted to maintain the integrity of travelling stock routes and under current arrangements, western landholders were “restricted in what they can do”.

“Ïf parts of the State are able to be freehold it would certainly give such landholders more opportunity to freely engage in anything from tourism activity to farming”.

Opposition rural affairs spokesman Mick Veitch questioned the funding arrangements of the potential reforms.

“The question is will money for ongoing maintenance and administration be transferred to local councils, along with ownership?” he said.

NSW Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham opposed reforms that could lead to ad-hoc conversion of leasehold to freehold land in western NSW.

“We don’t want this review to be a sneaky back door to a Swiss-cheesing of the western lands into freehold and public tenure.

“That would make management of that vast region almost untenable. We need a collective approach.”

Mr Buckingham said the “overwhelming response” from landholders to the review was confirmation that “they don’t want these important assets (Crown Land) sold off in a fire sale.”