An alliance of Australian environment organisations has warned governments and industry leaders that extensive environmental damage across Australia's rangelands would follow the freeholding of pastoral leases, in addition to extinguishing native title and jeopardising reconciliation.
The alliance includes the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), the Arid Lands Coalition (ALC), the Queensland Conservation Council (QCC), The Wilderness Society, the Conservation Councils of WA and SA, the NT Arid Lands Environment Centre, the NSW Nature Conservation Council, the World Wide Fund for Nature and Friends of the Earth. Alliance spokespeople say that because the prime minister has not ruled out state governments' proposals for blanket freeholding of pastoral leases, it must be assumed that such proposals are under active consideration.
"Land under pastoral lease covers 42% of the area of Australia and supports a significant proportion of Australia's biological diversity. Conservation reserves, by comparison, cover only 7%. As well as extinguishing native title rights, across-the-board freeholding of pastoral leases would seriously threaten the environments of nearly half the continent", said Jim Downey of the ACF.
"Freeholding removes land use from environmental regulation, such as in Queensland, where tree clearing controls apply only to leasehold land and not to freehold", said Imogen Zethoven of the QCC. "A recent CSIRO report shows that national clearing rates on freehold land are twice as high as on leasehold land", she said.
"Farmers' groups and governments are using the Wik decision to wind back progress on the National Rangeland Management Strategy (NRMS), which involves all lands used for grazing", said Richard Ledgar of the ALC. "The NRMS seeks to establish a process whereby non-viable enterprises can be removed. The hysteria from pastoralists about 'uncertainty' is just a smoke screen to hide the unsustainable nature of the industry while they gain freehold title to diversify into other commercial activities", he said.
The alliance is concerned that systematic extinguishing of native title and freeholding will:
- remove opportunities for negotiation and regional agreements about land use, economic development and environmental protection;
- enable unsustainable land uses such as broad-scale land clearing, intensive irrigated agriculture, native forest logging and unregulated tourism on an as-of-right basis;
- curtail existing controls on land use and management;
- pre-empt and prevent the development of a comprehensive and adequate national reserve system;
- remove government controls on unsustainable land use, such as periodic review and lease renewal, which currently provide mechanisms to promote ecologically sustainable land management;
- introduce impediments to the success of regional environmental strategies funded by the National Heritage Trust;
- reduce flexibility of decision-making in the event of climate change, and further declines in biodiversity;
- reduce public access to information about environmental values and the conservation status of land converted to freehold; and
- remove the capacity of governments to act in the public interest by adjusting stocking rates, setting logging rates, requiring land rehabilitation, and re-establishing or conserving wildlife corridors and riparian vegetation.