Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and cognate bills. Before I go to what I intend to mainly speak about today, I make the initial observation that this budget has gone down rather well in the electorate of Canning, from what I can ascertain from the phone calls and emails I have received, and so it should. It makes sure it restores a lot of confidence back into the electorate in relation to business, families and small business. It has been well accepted. It has taken away a lot of the hostility that would seem to have been generated from the initial budget. I make another observation: I wish I could be paid the same amount of money as Glenn Stevens for the job that seems to be done on behalf of the Reserve Bank of Australia. It appears that fiscal policy in this country for a long time has been run on the fact that you either have interest rates up or have interest rates down. If the big decision every month is whether interest rates go up or down, that is not a hard decision if that is how you are basing the fiscal policy of this country and how you manage your job at the Reserve Bank of Australia. I would like to see a bit more imagination.

Today I wish to speak about an issue in my electorate as part of the appropriation bills. Constituents of mine, ever since I was elected the member for Canning in 2001, come to me time after time. The issue is the Western Australian environmental offsets policy. This policy works in theory to limit the negative impact of the development and the clearing of native vegetation on the environment by purchasing alternate land or making financial contributions to science and/or strategy. However, in practice I have found the policy is uncoordinated and lacks value for money when it comes to the purchase of the offset lands. Time and again—and I shall outline some specific examples further on—this policy has appeared to me and my constituents of Canning to be a policy that forces developers and others to buy offsets for just the sake of buying offsets rather than effecting any actual restorative environmental enhancement.

For the benefit of the House, I would now like to take a moment to briefly explain what an offset is. An offset is an action or a set of actions undertaken to address significant impact that a development or activity, such as the clearing of native vegetation, may have on the local environment. This is done off-site. There are two types of offsets: direct offsets which involve on-ground action such as rehabilitation, restoration, revegetation and conservation; and indirect offsets which are actions taken to improve scientific knowledge and community understanding about the impact a project can have on the environment, so that any future projects can draw upon this knowledge. It is important to note that indirect offsets also include contributing to state government initiatives, policies or strategic funds.

It is also important to note that it is stated in the Western Australian government's environmental offsets policy that 'environmental offsets will only be considered after avoidance and mitigation options have been pursued.' My first concern with the Western Australian offsets policy is the suggestion under principle 4: 'for example, offsets could include actions that complement strategic conservation plans prepared by government et cetera, such as Bush Forever.' I acknowledge that the current WA government is not responsible for the implementation of the Bush Forever program. I will pause at this point to say that it was a former Liberal minister, Graham Kierath, who initiated the Bush Forever program, and I might add that the program was noble in trying to retain remnant urban bushland, but it had no compensation aspect to it. It was draconian in its application. But I do find it incredulous that any contribution such as a slapdash attempt at conservation would be included in this current policy of offsets, and this is what it refers to.

Bush Forever has been a major problem for my constituents for a long period of time. As federal member for Canning, I have had countless meetings with constituents about the implementation of this program since 2001. In fact, as the member for Swan from 1996 to 1998, I also had people coming to me about it. For most of these people, Bush Forever equates to financial ruin. This draconian piece of policy allowed the then government of the day to come along and seize chunks of people's land or mandate their existence because they were deemed to be environmentally sensitive, and therefore declare the land as protected under Bush Forever. This then leaves the landowner to maintain a parcel of land they cannot utilise. Not only can they not use it; they have to maintain it and make sure that it is looked after and fenced off and that predators and pests et cetera are kept away from it, at their own expense. The land is significantly devalued when the fed-up landowners decide to sell.

Just two weeks ago I was contacted by a constituent with a complaint about the use of aerial photographs to establish a Bush Forever site on his property in Forrestdale some 11 years ago. In this instance, the use of aerial photographs led to the plantings line being drawn through my constituent's pool and patio, rather than following the natural wetland boundary on the property. I would like to note that it has so far taken my constituent 11 years to have this situation rectified, and still he does not have a satisfactory resolution. He is desperate to sell and downsize now that he has retired, but the current mistake means that his property is worth at least $50,000 less than it should be.

Another example of the poor implementation of the Bush Forever policy has been experienced by my constituents Stephen and Margaret Day. My constituents bought their 12-acre property in 1999, two years before the Bush Forever policy came into effect. As part of their garden, the Days planted some bougainvilleas and she-oaks—plants that were later claimed to be natives and were used as a basis to implement a Bush Forever site on seven of the Days' 12 acres! And, as if this is not bad enough, the Days were told that they were unable to clear the Bush Forever land, despite warnings from local firefighters, who had been to the property on three prior occasions to fight fires, that it was a risk to their safety.

In similar instances, because these sites are either not maintained or are unable to be manipulated, they have become a habitat for exotic/non-native species of plants that ultimately render the program's main objective futile. For the state government to then suggest in their policy guidelines that offsets could contribute to such an impractical program as Bush Forever is clear evidence that they have learned very little about the practical application of environmental conservation policies.

Another example of what I can only call a nonsensical approach to environmental offsets relates to the purchase of offset lands far away from where the clearing or development is taking place. I refer to the now one-stop shop program which has been implemented by our Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt, and state environment ministers, which has resulted in duplication and overlap between the Commonwealth and state jurisdictions.

I have previously risen in parliament to speak on behalf of the Tuckey family—a well-established family in Mandurah—and their problems with offset purchases. To recap, the Tuckeys own a significant portion of land, referred to as Tuckey Cove, which they develop for residential purposes by way of subdivision. During the process of developing a portion of this land and seeking the relevant environmental approvals, the Tuckeys were informed that they would need to purchase offset land to mitigate the possible destruction of habitat for local cockatoo species, including the Forest red-tailed cockatoo, and Baudin's and Carnaby's cockatoos. After consultation with the department, the Tuckeys were advised that they would need to purchase offset lands in Gingin, located some 200 kilometres from Mandurah. What relevance this has to offsets for the local bird population, goodness only knows. That shows what happens when an environment department in Canberra, 3,000 kilometres away from Western Australia, decides to make orders like this.

I make no argument against the need to preserve the environment, especially those areas that are inhabited by endangered species, such as the aforementioned cockatoos. I do, however, take umbrage with the fact that, in this particular instance, the Tuckeys were forced to purchase lands far away from the potential habitat of the cockatoos they were meant to be affecting. I know that the bureaucrats in the state government will argue that not all offsets can be like-for-like and that in some instances exceptions need to be made. But this is happening all the time. It is not just a one-off. When you couple this decision with the fact that the Tuckeys were told that their $50,000 contribution to the Gingin project was insufficient—they ended up paying $100,000—for a one-hectare development, it certainly raises some questions.

I have other constituents who have been affected by this, such as NLG Sand, who were forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars to establish whether there were cockatoo habitats around their sand pit—there were not any. The Dawesville Catholic Primary School, which wanted to expand their school oval, were told they would have to buy offsets for the cockatoos. In Mandurah, a shopping centre development that wanted to put in a Coles store had to buy offset land in the wheat belt in Western Australia, with little or no relevance to their location.

An alternative arrangement would be for developers such as the Tuckeys and others to make monetary contributions to a designated fund to purchase environmentally sensitive land in the region. In other words, rather than having little bits of money here and there buying offsets all over the place, it would be sensible to have one large coordinated fund to buy large sensitive environmentally affected areas. This has been proposed by Minister Greg Hunt, and he tells me that state environment minister Jacobs supports such a pooled fund. One example of such a purchase is that part of the Yalgorup Lake system to the west of Lake Clifton in my electorate which is currently on the market. The Sarich land—Sarich of the orbital engine—could be used for conservation or recreation purposes if it were bought for this purpose. It is something like 1,000 hectares that cannot be used for anything but being retained in public ownership. But it is currently in private ownership and it cannot be developed. FRAGYLE, or the Friends of Ramsar Action Group for the Yalgorup Lakes Environment Inc., have been trying to persuade the state government to buy this land in order to maintain the local environment. The state government, however, has been unable to reach an agreeable price with the seller and the land is still for sale. It has come down from something like $30 million to $10 million—it is an absolute bargain, and the state government might want to get involved.

I acknowledge that under the policy guidelines there is scope for such a fund; however, I note that such a fund for Peel has not come into consideration at this stage. The Peel region is one of the fastest growing regions in Western Australia and, according to the Peel Development Commission, is set to rival the South West as the state's most populous region outside of the metro area. In light of the development occurring in this region and its environmentally significant areas, such as the Peel-Harvey catchment, we certainly encourage the consideration of the establishment of a fund to which offset payments for projects in the Peel region can be made. It is my understanding that such a scheme exists in a number of places around the country. Perhaps the most notable of these is the Reef Trust Investment Strategy, which allows developers who impact upon the Great Barrier Reef to pool offset moneys into a fund to target these impacts.

I would like to conclude with a quintessential example of the state government's incompetence when it comes to environmental policies. Many of you will be familiar with the case of Peter Swift, a farmer from my electorate who bought a piece of land and was subsequently prosecuted by the then Department of Environmental Conservation for clearing native vegetation on this property without a permit. As it turns out, Mr Swift was able to prove his innocence with the use of aerial photographs, which clearly demonstrated that the clearing had been undertaken by the previous owner. Even though he was proved innocent, Mr Swift was told that a significant portion of his land—310 of his 465 acres—could not be used for farming, as per Mr Swift's original intention. Once again, I find myself confronted with a constituent who has been chewed up and spat out by the state government and by the DEC and left with land that can neither be used nor sold due to its loss of value. Mr Swift has been left financially destitute and now faces foreclosure because he cannot afford to pay his loans, which were incurred through the legal fees he has had to pay.

What is the state government doing about its mistake, you might ask? Mr Swift is asking for an ex gratia payment. I hope that he gets that ex gratia payment because he did nothing wrong and he has been exonerated by the courts. The WA government needs to take seriously the issues of land tenure, land usage and the preservation of environmentally sensitive lands whilst giving serious protection and financial security for the owners of land that is privately owned. To that end, I conclude my statement to the House.

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