Qld: Beattie promises tree clearing resolution by week s end

AAP General News (Australia)
12-06-1999
Qld: Beattie promises tree clearing resolution by week s end

By Janelle Miles

BRISBANE, Dec 6 AAP - Premier Peter Beattie today promised a resolution to Queensland's
tree clearing crisis by the end of the week after remarking about the extent of burn-offs
across the state.

Mr Beattie accused farmers of deliberately lighting fires on their land ahead of the
introduction of new tree clearing guidelines.

The Premier yesterday flew to Charters Towers in north Queensland for a community cabinet
meeting, noticing on the way a number of fires that he said had been deliberately lit.

"I saw this from one end of the state to the other," he told ABC radio.

Mr Beattie said he was surprised to see the extent of clearing, which could not be
mistaken for bushfires.

"I'm ... saying to farmers: 'We don't need to have what is clearly panic clearing going
on'," he said.

A spokesman for the premier said Mr Beattie had given a verbal report to Cabinet today
and would meet with interest groups in Brisbane tomorrow night.

"He's said he wants a resolution this week," the spokesman said.

However, Queensland Conservation Council coordinator Imogen Zethoven said that if legislation
was not introduced, debated and passed by the end of the week, panic clearing would continue
for another three months until Parliament sat again in late February.

"With clearance at around 1,000 hectares a day, that's a tremendous amount of land
that could be lost," she said.

Ms Zethoven said the high rate of land clearing was primarily as a result of the current
discussions on tree clearing guidelines.

But she said land clearing was "always high in Queensland" because of the expansion
of grazing land for the beef cattle industry.

"If the current land clearing controls weren't on the agenda, we'd still be clearing
significant areas of land in Queensland," Ms Zethoven said.

"We're knocking over large areas of bush for expansion of the cattle industry. It's
just like South America where the Amazonian rainforest is being cleared for cattle.

"The same thing's happening here. You've got woodlands on very marginal, dry, semi-arid
country being cleared for cattle expansion."

Ms Zethoven said that in 1995-97, 340,000 hectares were cleared a year - equal to almost
a football field a minute.

"Between '91 and '95 it was 289,000 hectares.

"This year it will probably be around half a million hectares."

Ms Zethoven said even if tree clearing stopped today, water in the Condamine River
would be undrinkable within 20 years because of salinity problems.

The Queensland Opposition today criticised the Beattie Government for deliberately
setting out to discredit landholders on the issue.

"The Premier is clutching at straws claiming the burning seen en-route to Charters
Towers was evidence of panic clearing when ... it is the annual end of year managed maintenance
burnoff," said opposition rural communities spokesman Howard Hobbs.

"The Opposition and private landholders in Queensland will not tolerate the nationalisation
of personal assets and any tree clearing proposal would be fully explained."

AAP jhm/sc/cjh/de

KEYWORD: TREES NIGHTLEAD

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