Mr ANOULACK CHANTHIVONG (Macquarie Fields) (12:28): I make a contribution to debate on the Biodiversity Conservation Bill 2016 and the Local Land Services Amendment Bill 2016. For those who strongly value New South Wales's precious environmental and ecological systems, today is distressing and disappointing for them, particularly the Friends of the Environment movement and farmers, who value sensible and sustainable land management practices for themselves, for their families and for their future. This is another example of a Baird Liberal partisan approach to public policy, but this time it is an unnecessary attack on an existing and balanced environmental management framework that was developed in the spirit of cooperation and compromise between the National Farmers Federation and environmental groups.
The Biodiversity Conservation Bill 2016 and Local Land Services Amendment Bill 2016 is not a win for reasonable farmers who understand the precarious nature of the land that surrounds them and it is most certainly not a win for the environmental movement or the public interest. In its current form, this bill allows poor land management practices to thrive and it swings the pendulum too far in favour of landowners who undertake unwarranted large-scale land clearing at tremendous public cost with long-lasting, if not permanent, adverse effect on the quality of the soil, increased salinity, and an impact on water quality. Moreover, it incentivises reasonable farming practices to change for the worse.
The bill has more than 230 pages but the guiding principles of the Biodiversity Conservation Bill 2016 are clearly written in part 1 proposed clause 1.3—Purpose of the Act. I will compare the subclauses in that bill to subsections in the Act it seeks to replace, the Native Vegetation Act 2003. The contrast could not be greater and is evidence of why the Biodiversity Conservation Bill 2016 and the Local Land Services Amendment Bill 2016 do not maintain the sustainable environmental equilibrium that so many stakeholders worked so hard to achieve under the Native Vegetation Act 2003.
The verbs used in part 1 clause 3 of the Native Vegetation Act 2003 are very telling. Without reading every word in each subclause I will cite some of the Act: to provide for, encourage and promote the management of native vegetation; to prevent broadscale clearing unless it improves or maintains environmental outcomes; to protect native vegetation of high conservation value; to improve the condition of existing native vegetation; and to encourage the revegetation and rehabilitation of land. "Protect", "prevent", "promote" and "improve" are the verbs that should be central to any biodiversity legislation, if that legislation has the central aim of maintaining the environmental balance for farmers, environmental groups and the public at large. The common interest in preserving and protecting native vegetation and threatened species as a common good is for the benefit of all of us.
I now look for the same verbs in part 1, proposed section 1.3 of the Biodiversity Conservation Bill 2016. Sadly, they are not there. Let us go through some of the verbs that are there because they tell us everything about how unbalanced and unfair this bill is for all stakeholders: to maintain the diversity and quality of the ecosystem; to assess the extinction risk of species and ecological communities; to regulate human interactions with wildlife; to support and guide prioritised and strategic investment in biodiversity; to establish market-based conservation mechanisms; and, my favourite, to slow the rate of biodiversity loss. The last point is particularly salient because it accepts and assumes that biodiversity loss is a given and that reversing the trend is not feasible. All hope is considered lost for biodiversity and we should just accept a fatalist environmental mindset. I—and no doubt many others—disagree with that assumption and we do not accept that biodiversity loss is a given.
Where are the positive verbs in proposed section 1.3—the purpose of the Act—which in this bill clearly should be about protecting, promoting, preventing, encouraging, and improving environmental land management practices that help our native vegetation and our endangered and threatened species? They are not there. The reason they are not there is that the central aim of the Biodiversity Conservation Bill 2016 is not about maintaining environmental balance. This bill wants self-assessment and market economics to rule over a common good and a valuable public good. As we all know, self-assessment is primarily guided by self-interest, which in turn often leads to a reduction in the public value of a common good. Incentives in this bill for self-regulation—unfair and incomparable offsets for environmental loss and a weak measurement, monitoring and compliance methodology—lead only to a worse environmental outcome.
To my mind, this bill will just lead to a tragedy of the commons on our native vegetation and ecological system. There are so many losers under this bill, but there also are some winners. This is a win for those who believe that science and evidence in landscape management is optional. This is a win for those who deny facts. This bill, in moving from proper science and an evidence-based method of impact assessment to self-assessing codes, exemptions, and an increase in discretionary land-clearing, is a 180-degree change in direction. This bill is not a modification; it is a reversal. Sadly, the bill runs against what every common sense farmer knows and implements in their farming practices—that is, to sustain productive landscapes and to produce long-term profitability, farmers have to nurture and sustain, not rip and tear.
In 2003 the Native Vegetation Act was built on a framework of agreement and trust between key representatives of the farm lobby and the environment movement. It was hard fought, it was negotiated, but it was always based on the common principles of improving environmental outcomes. This bill does the opposite. Let me be clear: I am strongly of the view that the overwhelming majority of farmers in this State care for their land. The evidence demonstrates that the majority of farmers incorporate practices that are about sustainability and quality improvement. They are reasonable people who are sensible in their approach. They know that unless they nurture and protect their land, they run the risk of destroying it for their children and their grandchildren. In fact, it was that sense of reasonableness and that common-sense approach that created the common ground back in 2003.
People as diametrically opposed as Jeff Angel, who is the President of Total Environment Centre, and Mal Peters, who is a former President of the NSW Farmers Association, found common ground and worked together. In contrast this bill enjoys no bipartisan support. This bill is a political fix by a terrified Nationals party pandering to the extreme elements in the bush. I predict that, in time, this bill will serve to do more harm and cause more frustration to good, decent and hardworking farmers because this Government has pushed the pendulum of reasonableness way too far. The pendulum always swings back. By pandering to the extreme elements in the farm lobby, the sensible middle ground inevitably will feel the push back by the equally extreme elements in the environment movement. Throwing out a common-sense approach built on sustainability and replacing it with an act of environmental vandalism helps no-one. I call on the Government to restore the reasonableness that was imbedded in the Native Vegetation Act 2003 and not proceed with the legislation. I am delighted also to say that a future Labor government will restore the environmental equilibrium and restore the trust, cooperation and agreement between farmers, environmental groups and the public.
