PRA: Bushland at risk – part 2

Dr Bill Burrows as a rangeland scientist in his essay, Bushland at risk of continued tree and shrub thickening in Queensland, disciplined his reply to his field of expertise of woodland ecology to WWF’s Dr. Martin FJ Taylor’s paper, Bushland at risk of renewed clearing inQueensland.

Property Rights Australia provides these additional observations to the legal aspects mentioned in the WWF Taylor report.

 

 

Wyandra Landowner Trenton Hindman with his Barrister Phillip Sheridan outside the Charleville Magistrates court after being fine $110,000 for selectively clearing a woody weed. 

 

 

Not only has WWF’s Mr. Taylor attempted to quantify potential effects on the environment of the Vegetation Management Framework Amendments in his report, Bushland at risk of renewed clearing in Queensland, but he has waded into the strictly legal aspects of the Amendments based on scant legal knowledge other than the deep convictions held by WWF that any end justifies the means including vandalism of our legal system.

According to Mr. Taylor,

"The VMA amendments would also allow defendants facing prosecutions for illegal clearing to be able to employ new defences of ‘mistaken belief”. 

There is no “new defence” of ‘mistaken belief’. What has been reinstated by the Amendment is the old defence of “mistake of fact” whose removal in the Vegetation Management Act 1999 was considered an abrogation of civil liberties.

Similarly he contends that,

"Defendants would be allowed to withhold incriminating information from the prosecution."

The Rule of Law Institute of Australia (RoLIA) has condemned the NSW Government for removing the right to silence in the case of a serious indictable offence which is an offence which carries a penalty of 5 years imprisonment or longer. The right to silence was removed from landowners by the Vegetation Management Act 1999 (VMA) along with the presumption of innocence.

In fact (RoLIA) was under the impression that

“Until now, no jurisdiction in Australia has tampered with the principle that no person is required to incriminate themselves”

This just demonstrates that as a small community agriculturalists can be used as guinea pigs and the rest of the country, including professionals in the field, can remain unaware.

 "The right to remain silent when being investigated is a fundamental principle of our system of justice, alongside the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. It is the “golden thread” that runs through our common law system of criminal justice, as well as international human rights law, civil law and Sharia law."

Taylor also takes issue with the removal of the presumption that it is necessarily the landowner who has carried out illegal clearing or that “a person other than the defendant was responsible for the clearing.” He virtually explains this himself by stating that 12.5 % of clearing is unexplained and rising. The disrespect shown by referring to the landowner as the defendant is palpable.

All other contentions in this section of the paper are simplistic at best and dishonest at worst.

Self assessable codes will not make it more difficult to detect illegal activity as detection is carried out by satellite.

The Vegetation Management Act 1999 has always ignored the complexities of science, the civil rights and property rights  of landowners, has shown scant regard for the basic tenets of our legal system, there has been injustice, inconsistency and heavy handedness in sentencing and ill resourced landowners have had to contend with the unlimited financial and technical resources of the State. All this adds up to a system of justice which leaves fewer rights available to landowners than are generally considered minimal to the most violent of criminals including organised crime.

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Queensland Country Life published an article about Dr Bill Burrows essay, WWF in wilderness on veg reform.

 

Previous related posts

PRA: Bushland at risk – part 1

PRA: Qld reforms to Vegetation management act

Betrayal of Trust - Part 1

Betrayal of Trust - Part 2

Betrayal of Trust - Part 3

Betrayal of Trust - Part 4

  

PRA: Bushland at risk – part 1

Illustrious and internationally renowned woodland scientist Dr. Bill Burrows has been reluctantly lured from retirement by the ill-advised claims of environmental devastation made by WWF’s  Martin FJ Taylor’s report,  Bushland at risk of renewed clearing in Queensland.  

The thrust of the paper was supported by 27 Queensland scientists in a public statement.

In an essay entitled, Bushland at risk of continued tree and shrub thickening in Queensland, Dr. Burrows has accused Mr. Taylor and the WWF scientists of selective reading of the scientific literature.  They certainly do not recognise the complexity and diversity of ecological processes, many of which landowners and others have been warning have been disadvantaged by the broad brush of the Vegetation Management Act.

Encroachment of native woody weeds into what has previously been open forest with good grass cover disadvantages granivorous birds. Many ecosystems named in Dr. Burrows’ essay are so disadvantaged including mulga thickening in country east of the Warrego River and encroaching rainforest invading wet sclerophyll forest in the wet tropics. The cause of the move to woody plant dominance is thought to be changed fire regimes.

Much of the State is zoned for agriculture and the vast majority of that land is leasehold land where the only allowable activity is livestock and agriculture and the State is paid rental monies for that privilege.

There is a huge investment involved in clearing for agriculture as Dr Burrow writes in his essay,

So allowing land to be cleared and then preventing subsequent (and necessary) regrowth control amounts to the imposition of damaging retrospective legislation, without compensation for the harm inflicted. This is obviously unjust, inequitable, and even darn right vindictive-targeting as it does landholders who did nothing illegal.

Property Rights Australia welcomes this critique of aspects of the Taylor paper. The paper has been widely pedalled by WWF in the urban press along with their hysterical, alarmist and emotional claims as being a statement with authority based on science. The Taylor report was also quoted at length in the opposition’s speech in Parliament at the second reading of the VEGETATION MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK AMENDMENT BILL. [refer to page 1567] It is disappointing that the opposition during the speech [refer to page 1579] relied so heavily on information sourced from WWF which is no more than an unelected, unaccountable multinational money making corporation.

Obvious to those who live, work and manage the Australian landscape on reading the Taylor report is that it is no more than a desktop study based on a lot of assumptions and filled with a lot of irrelevant data. At best it could be called a literature review at worst it is shallow and lacking in substance. The literature referenced by the Taylor report is merely previous WWF papers also dubious in their scientific rigour.

It compares poorly to the essay, Bushland at risk of continued tree and shrub thickening in Queensland by Dr Burrows, an eminent woodland ecologist scientist with 40 years study in this field before his retirement. Dr Burrows’ paper is only five pages long but is extensively referenced by scientific papers in the following three pages.  

The Taylor report places a lot of emphasis of farmers achieving financial reward from carbon sinks. Dr Burrows in his essay points out,

The WWF document advances the cruel illusion that woodland resources on agricultural land will provide some type of carbon sink reward for rural landholders. First, let it be unequivocally stated that any such sink must be guaranteed to be kept in place, or replaced if lost, for 100 years before any advanced cash benefit would be forthcoming under the Kyoto Protocol.

To be rigorous in the measurement of a carbon sink one must measure below ground fluxes as well as above ground processes but the former is technologically constrained.

Third, the document states that the “difference between predicted standing biomass and maximum potential biomass was taken to represent the carbon sequestration opportunity from protecting and restoring native bushland”. Under these circumstances (potential biomass attained) any bushland on any property in Queensland would have no value for grazing or cropping anywhere in the State.

WWF would conveniently like to ignore that Queensland agricultural lands are not meant to be a free extension of the State’s national park system but are primarily to be used for the production of food and fibre.

Property rights Australia supports the science advanced by Dr. Burrows. It was science that was rejected by the Beattie Government in favour of the jingoistic wishes of the big environmental organisations who have no respect for property rights or people’s right to earn a living.

Any claims that rural industry has not suffered as a result of the Vegetation Management Act are simplistic and ill researched with ABARE, the Productivity Commission and the Reserve Bank of Australia  recording disturbing declines in the industry.

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Queensland Country Life published an article about Dr Bill Burrows essay, WWF in wilderness on veg reform.

Later published post

PRA: Bushland at risk – part 2 

Previous related posts

PRA: Qld reforms to Vegetation management act

Betrayal of Trust - Part 1

Betrayal of Trust - Part 2

Betrayal of Trust - Part 3

Betrayal of Trust - Part 4

 

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