Thread by @james_trezise

Queensland grazier fined $450k for illegal land clearing

Thee is a huge national scandal here also:

Thread:
abc.net.au/news/2019-04-0… via @abcnews

The clearing at Kingvale was the first ever to be called in by the federal regulator in 2016.

This means the proponent refused to refer the project for assessment, despite it having significant impacts on matters of national importance.

There was significant lobbying by senior coalition members for the dept. to approve the clearing.

The government then made a call to fast track the assessment (and approval) of the clearing, which appeared to be in response to political pressure - I'll come back to this...

.@nicole_hasham broke the news as a front page story that the clearing was going to be approved:

smh.com.au/politics/feder…

We actually had a good chat with @hamishNews about it back in May last year:

abc.net.au/radionational/…

In the mean time a small Queensland environment group, Environment Council of Central Queensland (ECoCeQ) took court action to say that the fast tracking was not legal.

They won with @EDONSW.

smh.com.au/politics/feder…

Kingvale is now being assessed, again for approval, but now dept has to deal with the proponent being convicted of significant environmental crimes.

Nonetheless, there will be sustained political pressure for it to be approved.

The proponent is well connected politically

This is the same as the scandal at #Toondah harbour

Which is the story of Josh Frydenberg ignoring department advice to push through a development by a major political donor in critical habitat and a Ramsar wetland.

So if you need to understand why so many people and orgs are pushing for new national environment laws, it's because of cases like these.

There are a lot more sitting in there also, but who's tracking them all? - there are hundreds of referrals every year.

It is why we need a federal EPA which is effectively resourced.

It's why we need environmental standards and outcomes written into law.

It's why we need to give citizens greater powers to hold decision makers account in the courts and ensure transperancy.

We need leadership

Everything above has been built on the back of years of work by orgs like @AusConservation @Wilderness_Aus @BirdlifeOz @hsi_australia

But fighting every battle through FoI and a broken impact assessment system which favours developer interests is not going to fix the problem.

To read more about toondah harbour see this story by @SteveCannane

mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-0…