Blackall’s Peter Baker was one of many graziers throughout Queensland throwing their hands up in disgust at the weekend announcement that the Palaszczuk government was planning to go back to the days of the Bligh government’s excessively restrictive vegetation management laws.
“The self-assessable codes the Newman government brought in meant we could use common sense,” he said.
“They just took away all the paperwork we had to get through to government to get anything done. We were not having to spend so much time in the office.
“Any normal person isn’t going to flatten all their trees. You’ve got to have shade for your stock, but you’ve got to have grass too.”
Peter and his wife Lynda have been living at Moorlands station west of Blackall for 15 years, although Lynda’s family have been custodians of the property for generations, and have been waging a constant battle to stop virgin gidyea seedlings from growing up and smothering their Mitchell grass downs.
Peter believes many of the issues he and fellow graziers are having with gidyea encroaching onto their downs country is due to the lack of fire in the landscape, employed by Aborigines but discouraged by European land managers.
Peter has been using a D6 dozer and small stickrake to knock down the emergent shrubs in his pasture, leaving a number of mother trees still intact in each paddock.
He said the years of drought they had experienced meant it was hard to tell how badly their productivity had been affected by the emerging forest of trees.
“But look, the place will be a jungle in 50 years if we’re not allowed to treat it. I’m not anti-tree but enough’s enough,” he said. “All the scrub is good for is harbouring dingoes and pigs.”
You've got to have shade for your stock, but you've got to have grass too.
- Peter Baker
Lynda said one of the concerns they had with the proposed legislation and its desired effect of closing down sensible vegetation management was what it would do to the value of their land.
“If you don’t keep trying to do something, your country becomes virtually valueless,” she said.
“Your production goes backwards each year, which has more of an effect when drought comes again.
“We’ll be running less stock, and we’ll be going to the government for help more often.”
