Carr Government Fails Environmental Hot Issues Test

Monday, 13 January 2003 10:00

Key environment groups today released their report card on six hot issues, showing a disappointing performance by the Carr government in meeting key requests for better environmental protection during 2002.

The groups* had written to the Premier last October seeking concrete actions before the end of 2002 on river health, land clearing, forests, wilderness, and greenhouse issues. At the time the groups informed the government that conservationists would be assessing the government's performance in response to the hot issues via a publicly released report card.

"The government had every opportunity to resolve these issues that have a broad impact across the NSW landscape during 2002. It is very disappointing that bar one, there has been either no green action on these six critical areas or, worse, severely regressive policies," said Total Environment Centre Director, Jeff Angel.

The government's response to requests for better river health gets the worst score, an F, whilst land clearing, forests and western woodlands receive an E. Only the electricity greenhouse benchmarks scheme, which passed through Parliament on the final sitting day last year, gained an A.

"The government can retrieve its poor performance by releasing some good election policies, but in the case of rivers we are on a collision course," said Kathy Ridge, Executive Officer, Nature Conservation Council of NSW.

"They have abandoned their commitment to ensure that adequate water was returned to rivers to save them from collapse."

The groups are committed to a major election campaign and will be undertaking further full and frank assessments of all parties' policies.

*(Nature Conservation Council of NSW, Total Environment Centre, Australian Conservation Foundation, National Parks Association of NSW, Colong Foundation for Wilderness, and The Wilderness Society)