Queensland’s new land-clearing laws are all stick and no carrot (but it’s time to do better)

The Queensland government passed legislation last month to prevent the clearing of high-value regrowth vegetation on freehold and Indigenous land. The move has been deeply unpopular with many landholders. They have argued that they are footing the bill for the commmunity’s environmental aspirations – without compensation.

Farmers are protesting changes to Queensland’s land use laws.

The government’s intention was to reinstate a “responsible vegetation management framework”, broadly in line with legislation first passed in 2004, but which the Newman government repealed in 2013.

Read the piece from The Conversation by a Senior Lecturer from the Griffith Law School at Griffith University, Philippa England - “Queensland’s new land-clearing laws are all stick and no carrot (but it’s time to do better).”

A 'yes' vote reallys means 'no'

America’s Senator agree, but on nothing.

They have voted “yes” the climate is changing, but “no” it is not because of human influence.

Such a stance is typical of a climate change denier with them agreeing unequivocally that the climate is changing, but tempering that with conditional statements that is has always changed and that what we are seeing is not caused by humans.

The changes, they are referring to and conveniently omit, happened over thousands, if not millions of years, while those troubling the world now are the manifestation of human behaviour since the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s, a mere blink in geological time.

A story on the ABC headed: “Climate change is real, US Senate agrees; Republican Senator rejectsit is man-made” tells us that US Senate Republicans have joined Democrats on the record acknowledging that climate change is real.

The symbolic amendment, attached to a controversial bill authorising construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, was approved 98-1 after Senator “James Inhofe, seen as the top climate change denier in Congress, announced he was supporting the legislation.

“Mr Inhofe, however, strongly rejected any suggestion that human activity was responsible for climate change,” the ABC reported.

Unlike many of our politicians, Andrew Bumpus takes the 'long view'

University of Melbourne's
Andrew Bumpus.

The “long view” is not something that could ever be equated with politics, particularly with present Australian politics.

The bid to repeal legislation requiring payment for carbon dioxide emissions is “short-termism” at its worst, but sadly it presently has currency in Australia and the Abbott-led coalition is profiteering from community-wide misunderstanding of what that legislative repeal really means.  

Fortunately, the senior lecturer of Environmental and Development at the University of Melbourne, Andrew Bumpus, does understand and has written about it on The Conversation in an article headed: “Carbon tax repeal raises long-term risks for Australian business”.