PROPERTY Rights Australia chairman Ron Bahnisch has lashed out at what he calls a "confusing" process which landholders must go through to clear land under new vegetation management laws.
His comments came as last week a contractor was fined a record $20,000 in Rockhampton Magistrates Court for clearing 465 hectares of native vegetation on a property near Dingo.
Donald Charles Edminstone was paid by the owner of the property for the work and believed a permit had been obtained.
The owner of the property is facing separate charges, due to be heard in the Rockhamp-ton Magistrates Court next month.
No conviction was recorded against Mr Edminstone.
The $20,000 penalty is the biggest fine handed to a contractor (non-landowner) under the Integrated Planning Act 1997 and Sustainable Planning Act 2009 for a vegetation-clearing offence.
More than half the vegetation cleared was classified 'endangered remnant vegetation'.
In a media release last week, Department of Environment and Resource Management's director of litigation, Reuben Carlos, advised anyone looking at clearing land to consult with local, state and federal government departments.
"Contractors have a responsibility to check whether permits to clear land are required, and if so, whether the landholder has obtained those permits," Mr Carlos said.
"Contractors must make sure the property owner has gone through the proper channels before any clearing is carried out."
Mr Bahnisch said these comments should give every landholder in the State cause for concern.
"It appears that before any clearing takes place, a landholder must contact and gain approval from all three tiers of government - local, state and commonwealth - and that following that approval, a contractor must conduct those inquiries as well," he said.
"Landholders who are confused as to their ability to conduct routine management of vegetation on their properties are in good company.
"In a recent Queensland Court of Appeal decision, Justice Fryberg observed: "Routine management is an even more complex term.
"The chains of nested definitions are so elaborate that it is impossible sensibly to state its meaning with those definitions expanded.
"This confusion is now compounded by the public pronouncements by DERM's senior legal officer this week.
"It is little wonder that landholders and their contractors run into trouble when trying to interpret woefully inaccurate vegetation mapping, that can change overnight, when that mapping not only doesn't reflect the reality of the vegetation on the ground, it doesn't have to; and even when it doesn't, landholders have had rights of appeal severely curtailed and in some cases removed by statute."
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