AGFORCE president John Cotter says he has resisted taking Natural Resources Minister Stephen Robertson into rural Queensland to see first hand the impact of the Bligh Government's controversial ban on the management of regrowth until after the lobby group has presented its submission to the Queensland Government this Friday.
"Our position has always been, and will be, that it is not acceptable for one hectare to be locked up at the expense of the extreme green movement making demands in the heat of an election campaign," Mr Cotter said.
"It does not take much to understand that the Government has made the wrong call on this decision which effectively prevents the management of a million hectares of country, particularly when agriculture is one of the only shining lights in this time of economic uncertainty.
"We want to use this time to prepare the best possible submission we are possibly capable of, to ensure there is no wriggle room for this Government on this fundamental issue of appropriate land management.
"This is far bigger than just the issue of regrowth management.
"This is about recognising that agriculture is one of the fundamental building blocks on which the Queensland economy is based.
"Locking up a million hectares of regrowth will have far wider implications than have been anticipated by the Queensland Government, including direct impacts on jobs which process agricultural products."
Submissions on the Bligh Government controversial three-month moratorium of the management of regrowth close tomorrow (May 15).
Mr Cotter said AgForce has been flooded with information from landholders across affected areas of Queensland providing invaluable examples highlighting the failure of plans to lock up so-called 'endangered' regrowth.
He said he had also spent several days at Beef 2009 listening with, in discussion and observing landholders at both the AgForce stand and EPA stand.
He said he continues to be surprised by how many producers had not made themselves aware of how the moratorium impacted on their land.
He also met with Premier Anna Bligh and key ministers during the five-day event in Rockhampton.
"The queues of landholders at times wanting information were quite incredible," Mr Cotter said.
"I think many people are still in a state of disbelief that after what landholders went through in the development of the Vegetation Management Act that any government would then bring in a moratorium on the management of regrowth.
"Landholders are very clearly saying there is no sound basis and certainly no fairness in this moratorium."
Mr Cotter said the submission would focus on four key areas:
- Removal of productive land at a time of global uncertainty.
- Economic impacts demonstrated through case studies and information gathered directly from landholders.
- Questiona ble environmental outcomes.
- Issues of legislative uncertainty, which are being reflected in the property market.
Additional ly, Mr Cotter said vegetation management must encompass a whole-of-landscape planning approach driven by biodiversity and landscape processes including:
- The need for adequate data and integrated information systems as a basis for making informed decisions.
- A regional approach to vegetation management planning.
- A self-regulatory approach as far as possible.
- Compensation where landholders' rights and legitimate and reasonable expectations have been diminished.
The submission will also outline the cumulative impacts of the moratorium, and focus on
• Property rights and the diminution of property values,
• The impact on food and fibre security and
• The relevance of the Federal Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
Mr Cotter said AgForce does not support restrictions on the clearing of regrowth because this represents a retrospective philosophy and a claw-back of current productive agricultural land.
"The proposed regulatory approach is impractical and lacks commonsense," Mr Cotter said.
"A far more effective means of protecting a range of values at a landscape level is through negotiated outcomes rather than enforced predetermined outcomes.
"AgForce is seriously concerned with the accuracy of the moratorium mapping.
"The scale is not accurate enough for practical use.
"The apparent lack of ground-truthing to positively identify and accurately record the location of endangered regrowth in order to validate the information available for the maps is also of concern.
"Additionally, as we have already seen the moratorium maps could be changed or updated at any time. All landholders should be advised of any changes affecting their property, this is currently not occurring."
Mr Cotter said that once land is initially cleared, by whatever means, any subsequent regrowth rarely, if ever, mimics the botanical structure and composition of the original woodland.
And of course even the small likelihood of this happening falls away markedly with each additional regrowth control cycle.
"It should now be obvious that restricting the clearing of regrowth on agricultural land will not restore the original structure and composition of the vegetation, nor its original fauna population and species mix," Mr Cotter said.
"Regulatory and economic constraints on land clearing over many years, along with commonsense, dictate that most regrowth will be found on more productive parts of a property.
"Such regrowth paddocks should be seen as pockets of viability within the grazing enterprise, because they will increase livestock production two to four fold on a treated area basis, when they reach their pasture potential.
"That is, they will often represent the difference between financial success and failure in property management."
Mr Cotter said agriculture had existed for more than 100 years on many of the affected properties.
The landholders have demonstrated responsible stewardship for that time and feel the government is responding by punishing them for their good stewardship, he said.
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