BUSHLAND CLEARING MINISTER GETS NO CONFIDENCE VOTE

Monday, 24 September 2001 10:00

Six peak environment groups today announced they had passed a no confidence motion in the NSW Minister for Land and Water Conservation, Richard Amery.

The vote is the result of the Minister?s failure to resolve long running concerns about administration of the Native Vegetation Conservation Act. With land clearing a major public concern, a massive loss of confidence in the Government?s credibility on environmental matters is rapidly developing, the groups said.

The Minister is a bushland clearing Minister. We have had one incompetent action after another, from him and his Department. The extent of land clearing is grossly understated; information is kept from the community vegetation committees; the register of land clearing consents required by the law is incomplete keeping information secret from the public; conservation targets delayed time and time again; and the Minister tells rural people he does not favour prosecution for illegal clearing, said Jeff Angel, Director of Total Environment Centre.

The sense of disenchantment with the Minister is pervasive. We have tried to make the relationship with the Minister work, but we cant ignore what our representatives on the vegetation committees tell us about the incompetent servicing by his Department. Some of our most senior people have resigned from the committees that are supposed to produce plans that protect native bushland from clearing, said Kathy Ridge, Executive Officer of the Nature Conservation Council of NSW.

Spokesperson, Susie Russell for the North Coast Environment Council said, Our groups are in revolt over the handling of land clearing and private forestry matters. The Minister and his Department are intent on clearing native forest for plantations and applying much weaker environmental controls on private land logging than those that apply to public state forest. And they are promoting a scheme that allows clearing of intact native bush to be offset by artificial plantings. Its an environmental scandal.

The groups represent more than 150 local and regional environment organisations and several hundred thousand people in the country and city.