Betrayal of Trust - Part 4

Continuing on from     Betrayal of Trust – Part 1

                           Betrayal of Trust – Part 2

                           Betrayal of Trust – Part 3

Conclusion

There was a time when there existed a very positive relationship between Government agency staff and landowners. In my own area great strides of progress were made in an environmental problem of soil loss under traditional farming practices. QDNR staff brought new information, the building of contour banks and later on zero-till farming.

 

Photo, contour bank construction 1960 era

This was taken to the farmer and together, landholder and the Department cooperatively rectified a serious problem In 1999 the options were open to the Qld Government in what laws it used to implement this new philosophy of vegetation management. They chose a very authoritarian approach and both oppressive and punitive to the people it applies to. Trust is not going to happen within the current legal/ administrative structure.

A co-operative model has been replaced with a coercive one.

The power of the State is now available to determine what landowners can and can’t do in very significant ways in managing their own properties. The highly significant change in the role of agency staff and the employment of compliance officers has resulted in a change of culture and a change in attitude towards landowners. These changes have been directed from the political realm at the top and influenced by the extreme end of the environmental movement.

To drive results the approach is now all stick and no carrot. There appears to be an inability to recognise and to congratulate progressive practical, hands on conservation work by individual landowners or by community groups such as Landcare. The perversion of the original Landcare ethos that was rewarded by NHT 1 funding to Catchment Management Authority’s with the power of prosecution is very worrying indeed.

Summary

•  Prior to the 1990's a relationship of trust & respect developed between landowners & departmental field staff.  

•  There was a shared two way exchange of information & ideas to improvement in on farm productivity & environmental outcomes  

•  Soil conservation work is a good example of using contour banks & then zero till farming to combat soil erosion  

•  The then QDNR also promoting both good production together with environment
• http://live.greeningaustralia.org.au/nativevegetation/pages/pdf/Authors%20D/16_Dorricott.pdf 
•  Research had been conducted over extended periods of balancing farm production with environmental outcomes. Dr Bill Burrows had collected data since 1965, as have others scientists involved in this field including local Landcare groups.  

•  Qld Govt. chose to ignore some of the available science in the passing of the native vegetation laws & the like.  

•  Research appears to be now suppressed.  
• eg. burying in cabinet documents the report the Govt commissioned Dr Bill Burrow's to undertake

•  There has been a change in culture and a change of attitudes towards landowners. Inaccurate stereotypes have not been helpful; in some cases developed to the degree that justifies an approach of vindictive vilification towards landowners.

•  Changes of agency staff roles have been directed from the political realm at the top and influenced by the extreme end of the environmental movement.  

•  Qld Govt chose to ignore local expertise & dedicated effort when it ignored significant portions of the Regional Vegetation Management Plans.  

•  The attitude of a few in Govt & DNR head office towards the few landowners with poor environmental record imposed on all an approach of animosity & adversarial.  

•  Co-operation between landowners & departmental field staff was replaced with coercion  

•  All Department field staff have been affected, not just vegetation management officers  

•  All landowners have been affected: not just those with significant percentage of remnant vegetation.  

•  Loss of national productivity from the agricultural sector: hard to measure but logically must exist in a climate of distrust with little focus on farm productivity. 

•  Within landowners there has been a rise of negativity, reactionary attitudes; a hardened mindset 

•  The lack of recognition of landowners continual contact & life time observations of their land had profoundly impacted the Landcare movement.  

•  Community organizations like Landcare & Greening Australia have lost the original concept of community direction. As quoted previously from a paper by James Whelan, “no longer have the capacity to engage meaningfully in either decision making or on-ground environmental projects.”  

•  Direction now comes from Govt which is often not meeting community needs  

•  Funding is now through Regional Bodies that were supposed to channel monies to the community level  

•  Regional bodies have been allowed to operate beyond their guidelines and have absorbed much of the funding in establishing their own governance system.  

•  Local community Landcare groups and environmental organisations are being strangled out of existence.  

•  In some States, Regional Bodies have been called Catchment Management Authorities (CMA's) with the power to report & prosecute: Will this eventually happen in QLD as well?  

•  CMA's have perverted the Landcare ethos drastically to be yet another adversarial, coercive force against landowners  

•  There is no system to congratulate or reward good environmental endeavours by landowners  

•  There has been a chronic misunderstanding of the culture of rural Australian communities

Betrayal of Trust - Part 3

Continuing on from Betrayal of Trust – Part 1

                             Betrayal of Trust – Part 2 

Impacts on the Landcare movement







The approach by the Qld Government has not changed in its dealings with landowners from the time of the above quoted article in 2003. State Government has learnt little to improve its relationship with those closest to the land itself. This is illustrated by the quote below following the announcement of proposed vegetation regrowth laws in this article from September 2009 called, Bligh to move on regrowth.

“Injune landholder Wally Peart said he felt betrayed by government.

Mr Peart - who was the inaugural chairman of Landcare in Queensland - said the landholders who had developed their land in the most sustainable and appropriate ways were the ones being suffering the greatest penalties.

"Under Landcare we encouraged people to leave scrub, retain shade-lines and leave country untouched," said Mr Peart.

"But the people who cleared their country wall to wall are the ones in the best position.

"I feel absolutely betrayed."

In the above quote a very prominent member of the founders of the Landcare ethos in this nation, Mr Wally Peart, has come out publicly and has said in effect that the principles of Landcare have been betrayed. What has happened to cause this betrayal on the most successful conservation programs that was willingly embraced by the majority of Australian land managers; that is farmers and graziers?  

This following passage is quoted from a paper written by Brisbane academic, James Whelan. Written in 2005 the present day issues were already well apparent; the paper is called, Six Reasons Not to Engage: Compromise, Confrontation and the Commons

“A third explanation for community sector reservation about community engagement is that this discourse has been applied to decision-making processes that fall well short of the democratic ideals appropriately associated with community engagement. At times, expressions such as community engagement, consultation, partnership and collaboration are used to describe top-down, decide-announce-defend approaches to environmental management. Community engagement activities are frequently conducted after political support for specific outcomes has already been announced. The expression ‘partnership’ is applied to governance arrangements that clearly maintain or entrench power differentials between government agencies and non government organisations.

The evolution of the Natural Heritage Trust, one of the nation’s most significant exercises in community engagement and regionalisation, highlights the potential for a mismatch between rhetoric, actions and consequences. During the first five years of this environmental fund, recipients of government support were selected by panels with strong community representation (NNRMTF 1999, p. 30). The second phase of the scheme relies on regional organisations to determine priority natural resource management interventions. Although the scheme is consistently described by the state and national funding agencies as ‘community-led’, the bilateral agreements between these two levels of government make it clear that while significant responsibility for NRM has been devolved to community-based organisations, this is accompanied by only limited power. Under these arrangements, government bodies retain the authority to endorse and fund regional plans.

Furthermore, the transition from the first phase of this scheme to the second involved a lengthy hiatus during which community groups that had relied on government funding languished. Many of these groups, including extensive networks of ‘carers’ (landcare, bushcare and waterwatch groups), no longer have the capacity to engage meaningfully in either decision making or on-ground environmental projects. Government failure to genuinely share power with regional NRM organisations, or to maintain funding for groups that facilitate community engagement in environmental governance, suggests a lack of “credible commitment” to sustainability that would entail a “demonstrable agenda of appropriate and believable reforms within policy and institutional systems” (Dovers 2003, p. 16).”

The implication for local Landcare groups from a change in Government attitudes towards land managers resulted in changes to guidelines and funding for local community Landcare groups and Greening Australia.

There were detrimental impacts such as funding is no longer given directly to local community Landcare groups but under current funding arrangements is distributed to a structure of Regional Bodies. The original concept was for the regional bodies to have a small staff and they were to outsource office and on groundwork with farmers to Landcare groups, Greening Australia and other consultants. These regional bodies have become bloated bureaucracies, absorbing most of the funding, will not work with individual farmers and have effectively cut off the majority of funding to community Landcare groups. These Regional Bodies must be made to comply with guidelines established early in 2003.

In some States these Regional Bodies have now been called Catchment Management Authority’s (CMA’s) and have been given additional powers of reporting and the prosecution of landowners. Such arrangements must not be allowed to disguise themselves as part of the Landcare philosophy; this has been an evolution into a completely different beast

 

Later published

Betrayal of Trust - Part 4

Betrayal of Trust - Part 2

Continuing on from Betrayal of Trust – Part 1 

Vegetation Management Act

 
Instead of concentrating on education and using scientific research as a guidance as what to do; from around the year of 2001 the then Premier of QLD, Mr. Peter Beattie, suppressed the research and created the expectation in the near future of closing down any further land development; therefore strangling many farming families’ opportunity for future income. The result was panic clearing.
 

Image - print by William Strang, Farmer kneeling before justice.


The Beattie Government continued to fuel these expectations for two entire years until amendments made to the Vegetation Management Act came into effect in 2003, where the balance of all other remnant ecosystems was banned from clearing; all broad scale clearing stopped.

To this day I have a sense of sadness over this entire farce. The opportunity was lost. Landholders at the time would’ve been responsive to this research and moved forward in a positive way to the benefit of both farming and the environment. Currently, landholders have an even greater reason to mistrust Government with amendments to Act in 2003, additional amendments in 2005 and the moratorium on regrowth in April 2009 and the subsequent legislation on regrowth in October 2009.

To offer some evidence to the statement above that the QLD Premier and Government suppressed research, the following quote is from Michael Thompson, a senior Rural Press reporter who writes in the article, Lost battle of Queensland farming,

“Dr Burrows and a team of Primary Industries and Natural Resources scientists and economists were asked to prepare a paper for submission to the Productivity Commission. What that team found was distinctly unpalatable to the Queensland Government, which then decided to withdraw its participation in the PC inquiry, and took Dr Burrows’ research into Cabinet to prevent its public release.”

Regional Vegetation Management Plans

In the early stage when there was the possibility that tree clearing would, in the future, be regulated, a process of consultation was undertaken. Regional committees where assembled of various stakeholders to write management plans called, Regional Vegetation Management Plans (RVMP’s), of future regulation of vegetation management at the catchment and property level. Many people considerable time and resources making an honest effort completing this task using local knowledge and generational experience. The Regional Vegetation Management Plans were completed only to have the Government immediately completely disregard them or use small parts of them out of context with the original intent.

The disregard of the role the rural community played in development of the RVMP’s and also to the lack of recognition to landowner conservationists that retained considerable remnant vegetation only to be aggressively stood over by compliance officers after the introduction of the Vegetation Laws in 1999 and the Amendments that followed. “Compliance Officer” was a new role created in the QDNR after the Vegetation Management Act 1999 came into effect. It saw the change of agency staff working with farmers in an atmosphere of goodwill and mutual respect to that of policing, prosecution and distrust. Previous important conservation measures such as soil conservation work was abandoned and these personnel moved into vegetation management work

Impacts on Landowners

In January 2003, State councillor for Agforce Gus McGown wrote a newspaper article called, Long-term policy for resource management must engage landholders; in which he warned  

“Media stunts, though, does not make successful policy.

As an exercise in winning the hearts and minds of primary producers, it fails.

Whether it is encouraging voluntary conservation measures or water use efficiency, it is the carrot rather than the big stick approach that gets the thumbs up.

The cheapest way to get things done does not involve enforcement or heavy-handed administration.

If we are to achieve a sustainable future for rural Queensland, cooperation from landholders will be necessary.

Decisions based on access to Commonwealth funding and alienating primary producers might produce backslapping over coffee in the State Government's Executive Building.

However, it makes the development of a long-term policy for integrated natural resource management increasingly difficult.”  

Later in 2003, sadly all too common became stories such as this one in September 2003, Disappointment and anger at guilty plea. After reading this article there is no doubt as to some of the reasons for landowners feeling vilified, victimised and alienated from Government and agency staff.

“Last week the Surat grazier was forced to plead guilty to a case he could have won, with the Crown's case built around information he volunteered while allegedly being secretly tape-recorded.

But due to the "horrendous" financial cost of fighting the comparably unlimited legal resources of the Department of Natural Resources and Mines, Mr White was forced to succumb to the contentious charge.

Now Mr White, 60, is filled with disappointment and anger.

Even in cutting his losses, he still faces $15,000 in his own legal fees, plus $4800 in Crown legal costs as awarded by Magistrate Dennis Butel, who fined Mr White $600 but ordered that no conviction be recorded.

If Mr White had contested the charge he was facing legal fees of about $30,000 if he had won, or up to $50,000 if he had lost, a heartbreaking prospect on the back of a devastating drought.”

Continue to read

Betrayal of Trust - Part 3

Betrayal of Trust - Part 4

Betrayal of Trust - Part 1

Reform of land clearing laws in Queensland, NSW and WA is about to become a hot issue.  I’m breaking down a document into manageable blog size bites for you to digest and think about. This document was written in 2010 in response to a Senate inquiry into vegetation management laws. All four people involved in preparing this document were once and one still is deeply involved in either Landcare, Greening Australia or a Basin Association.

There is material in this document that will challenge the concept you may hold about land clearing. I encourage you to respond to this series of blogs with your thoughts and questions but please do so in a civil manner. I do have a lot of extra information and references that I can share on this subject.

The document is not designed to be primarily about the rights & wrongs of land clearing itself but how by abandonment of the cooperative approach against coercion does not work. It’s about a deplorable era in Qld state politics were the urban/ rural divide was used as wedge for political expediency. 

The views in this document are deeply felt by myself. There was so much that was possible thrown out of the window. 

Loss of trust, cooperation and changed mindsets from new laws

Compiled by: Mr Dale Stiller

Edited by Mr Steve Cupitt

In consultation with Mr Jock Douglas and Ms Roxane Blackely

Summary

This document aims to bring to your attention a regrettable change in the relationship, and especially trust, between Government agency staff and landowners. This has been to the detriment of maintaining balanced outcomes for farm productivity and environmental values caused by a quantum shift in Government policy, regulations and Acts. The landowners operating farming and grazing enterprises have been impacted by a worldview influenced by extreme environmentalism. This has effectively stopped cooperation with Government agency staff with landowners being forced to comply (with no consultation), with directives manufactured from afar and external to the realities of the landscape in which they have lifetime experience.

Background

 

Throughout the late 1990’s there was much field research into best practice land clearing that would fulfil the needs of farming families to generate a viable income and to maintain a balance and integration between conservation and production. The most notable and comprehensive was the research conducted by rangelands scientist Dr Bill Burrows. In the lecture, Seeing the wood(land) for the trees — An individual perspective of Queensland woodland studies (1965–2005), Dr Burrows speaks of starting his body of work in 1965. By the late 1990’s Dr Burrows had a wealth of data on the dynamics of the tree-grass relationship that enabled him to clearly demonstrate to landowners that in terms of dollar returns of production that it was best not to clear fence to fence, but to retain 20% of remnant timber in strips or shade-lines. The data from the extensive trial work conducted in the region of Dingo, Queensland, was quite compelling.  

There were others studying the relationships on tree density to grass production with particular reference to the scientific research conducted by Dr Chris Chilcott on properties in central QLD and the Darling Downs where the advantages of vegetation retention and management was demonstrated clearly. I can recall a booklet released during this period of time by the QDNR of case studies of best practice of tree clearing.  

Through my involvement with the local Landcare Group, we completed a study funded by the National Heritage Trust (NHT) on the valuation of variable widths of retained strips of timber left behind by a blade ploughing operation. This study involved a comprehensive collection of data of population densities of fauna & flora, grass growth and temperature variables.

In a grazing situation there are benefits of cooler temperatures in summer downwind of a tree corridor because of leaf transpiration & warmer temperatures in winter because of the windbreak effect and retention of warmer air held captive within the vegetation. The study showed at the correct widths between these corridors of retained trees, that there was a positive benefit for grass yield. Measured in kg/ha, there was close to zero kg/ha dry matter at the tree-line. This amount climbed in amount of kg/ha out to 60 meters from the tree-line. From 60 to 100 meters kg/ha dry matter remained stable & after 100m production fell away again. At the 100 m mark the benefit the timber was having on the grass had disappeared.  

This project of the Taroom Shire Landcare Group (TSLG) aimed to quantify the actual benefits; what was the level of production and what the benefits to the native fauna & flora were. Government agency staff and independent researchers partnered the project. The local rural community identified the need for research, completed the field component and assisted in all technical aspects. The methodology used to set up the research was done by expert partners, who also interpreted the data. To view further details of this project, download this report and refer to page 30.  

TSLG not only had extensive data from our own study but also had compiled research from many other sources. Our group was well down the path in planning the development and implementation of field days and workshops. It was our belief that farmers & graziers would have been receptive to this information as at that time, there was a good relationship and deep trust between agency staff and landowners. The clearing of trees is very expensive and with increased benefits proven to be available in retention of 20% of vegetation, this could equate in a decrease of 20% of the cost.  

The evidence quite clearly showed that it wasn’t tree clearing as such that was a problem but rather how it was conducted and level of planning developed prior to clearing. In the lecture delivered in 2002, page 12, (link provided in first paragraph of submission), Dr Bill Burrows says,

“Frankly, I consider that we would all benefit by concentrating in the future on educating, rather than further regulating rural landholders. Foremost amongst these lessons would be the need for more thought to be given by those clearing land to pre-clearing planning and post clearing management, rather than the clearing operation itself.”

The above quote from 2002 was after the Vegetation Management Act of 1999 came into effect which had placed a blanket ban on all mapped dominate and sub-dominate endangered regional ecosystems. Some regulation was in place; there was a lot of research being undertaken; urban public opinion was changing, in my belief due to campaigns by extreme environmentalists; political pressure was mounting and rural landowners were facing an uncertain future.

Land and Water Australia in its journal Thinking Bush reported ongoing research by Dr Chris Chilcott and others, expressed many of these tensions and dilemmas.

To continue pleased click on the following links

Betrayal of Trust - Part 2

Betrayal of Trust - Part 3

Betrayal of Trust - Part 4