The ruling last week by the Land and Environment Court that declared the native vegetation codes invalid was yet another embarrassing moment for the NSW government.
Given the reforms to the Native Vegetation Act were part of a flagship election promise that goes back at least to when Andrew Stoner was leader of the NSW Nationals during their landslide victory in the 2011 election, you would have hoped the party was paying more attention to the detail than this.
It’s just the sort of slip up that will help Labor edge closer to a 2019 victory.
The Land, meanwhile, has been waiting to see how a number of early applications that farmers have put forward to the Local Land Services go, as they pass through the approvals process.
This includes looking at what farmers are able to clear, how the offsets are working, and how the relationships are working on the ground with LLS staff who have been stretched pretty thin as they attempt to properly assess each case.
While it is reassuring the correcting of the codes won’t cost the tax payer much, according to the government, The Land has no doubt plenty of people are confused as to how the codes can be remade one day and back in effect the next day.
While the slip up was an embarrassing one for the government and shouldn’t have happened, it does sound like not a great deal more than a couple of signatures that were needed from the Environment Minister to put things back on the straight and narrow, and in the meantime has caused a bit of political drama.
It is also of concern that Labor is still keen to scrap the new laws and reinstate the old Native Vegetation Act.
The new Act has barely had a chance to be road tested, but so far appears to be more practical, even before the maps have been released.
This sort of administrative slip-up with the codes is not what we need from the Coalition.
Despite its best intentions to represent agriculture, it will bring itself undone with these sorts of mistakes, especially after the water theft scandal, for which investigations are still underway, and will no doubt continue to be a thorn in its side into next year.
At least unlike the water issue, this one was an easy fix. One actually wonders why the Nature Conservation Council went to the expense of taking it to court when all that was needed was a minister’s signature.
