LAST minute amendments have been proposed to the Palaszczuk government's controversial vegetation management laws.
LNP leader Deb Frecklington said she was pleading with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to listen to farmers and accept the proposed amendments.
“This situation is extremely desperate for our farmers and we need to use any means necessary to make a bad situation slightly more palatable,” Ms Frecklington said.
“That’s why we are proposing some common sense amendments that even the most raging greenie would find hard to argue against.”
LNP opposition natural resources spokesman Dale Last said the amendments had been put together after consultation with the farmer groups AgForce and Queensland Farmers’ Federation.
The proposed amendments are:
- Deliver administrative and bureaucratic accountability. If an application to undertake vegetation management practices isn’t dealt within 30 business days it is deemed to be approved.
- Return sensible ‘right to enter’ property rights. Remove powers of enforcement officers so they can’t enter a private property without a warrant.
- Return to a sensible definition of High value regrowth vegetation. Remove the government’s definition of area that has not been cleared for at least 15 years, to an area that has not been cleared for 29 years.
- Allow considered and economically significant agricultural clearing. Return High Value Agriculture (HVA) and Irrigated High Value Agriculture (IHVA) clearing into the Development assessment process.
- Reinstate Mulga and Fodder Area Management Plans so drought impacted farmers can feed their cattle without being tied up in red tape.
Mr Last said the LNP was committed to environmental protection and laws to ensure vegetation management is undertaken in a properly regulated manner.
“This will ensure biodiversity is protected along with our streams and rivers and particularly in the catchments of the Great Barrier Reef,” he said.
“It is important to acknowledge that these five simple and practical amendments do not solve all issues with these flawed laws but they do attempt to bring some administrative and principled balance to the vegetation laws that will offer farmers some reprieve.”
