Stuck in the native veg mire

Opposition to the controversial Act has bubbled to the surface a number of times since it was introduced in 2003, and landowners are running out of patience with the State government’s promises of an overhaul.

“The feeling of helplessness and frustration has been exacerbated by the slowness of the Coalition’s efforts to fix it (the Native Vegetation Act),” said Bronwyn Petrie, “Brialeigh”, Tenterfield.

While much debate since last week’s alleged murder of an Office of Environment and Health compliance officer has centred on the Native Vegetation Act, Mrs Petrie and Doug Menzies, “Summerlea”, Nyngan, both said problems with the Act had been around for a long time before this, and were not going away.

“When I was a teenager, my father converted a portion of our land to freehold (from leasehold),” Mr Menzies said.

“The Department of Land told us we were buying the rights to all the timber on the place.

“The native veg laws took back everything we bought... for no compensation.”

Mr Menzies was chairman of the Regional Community Survival Group, a collection of landowners in the Nyngan area who protested against the Native Vegetation Act by barricading farms to keep compliance officers from investigating land clearing in 2006 and 2007.

“We blockaded the compliance staff, but there was never any threat of violence... we always notified the police of our protest first,” Mr Menzies said.

“They (compliance officers) walked up to the gate, we’d shake their hands and tell them they wouldn’t be going onto the place that day... We chased them away (from properties) three or four times.”

Mrs Petrie said the Native Vegetation Act amounted to “regulatory theft from the government, politics of envy from the Greens and heartbreak for people on the land.”

“You cannot expect farmers to carry the guilt (about the environment) of the community who are living in the most over-cleared areas of the State (cities),” she said.

According to Mrs Petrie, the purpose of the Act should be to stop people clearing massive amounts of untouched country, not managing regrowth, as she and her family tried to do on their land.

Due to the Act defining clearable regrowth to 1990, when previously you were able clear regrowth up to 45 years old, it made the native forestry operation the Petrie’s attempted “unviable”, she said.

“It (the Act) could be fixed so easily,” she said.

NSW Environment Minister Rob Stokes said the review of the Act was already happening, with an issues paper released yesterday but did not put a date on when any changes to the legislation might occur.

“The review is currently underway and includes extensive discussions with stakeholders. We expect the expert panel to release an issues paper this week before providing its final report to the government in December,” Mr Stokes said.

“Once the final report is received, the government will consider next steps to continue its commitment to modernise the legislation.”

A spokesman for the Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) said complaints such as Mrs Petrie’s and Mr Menzies’ were the exception rather than the norm.

“Nineteen of 20 property owners do not clear substantial amounts of native vegetation and of the remaining one in 20, the overwhelming majority comply with the Native Vegetation Act,” the spokesman said.

Tim Ferraro, executive manager for Local Land Services (LLS) said many who applied to clear land were “pleasantly surprised” at how much they could do under the Act.

“There is plenty of talk around that you can’t clear a fence line, or a single tree in a paddock. The vast majority of the time, that is incorrect,” Mr Ferraro said.

Since 2005, more than 3000 property vegetation plans under the Act had been approved, he said.

Mr Ferraro said routine vegetation management was normally fine, although he noted farmers seeking broad scale land clearing were often disappointed.

The Shooters and Fishers Party is attempting to introduce the Native Vegetation Amendment Bill 2014, which would allow broadscale clearing in some circumstances.

A spokesman for the party said he hoped to debate the amendment in the NSW Upper House next week, and if not then certainly before the end of September.

Mr Ferraro said landowners who wanted more information on what they could clear on their properties could contact their regional LLS office.