Media Releases

09 Oct 2009 QUEENSLAND GOVERNMENT SHOULD WORK WITH FARMERS TO PROTECT THE GREAT BARRIER REEF

The Queensland Farmers’ Federation (QFF) has today questioned what the real outcomes will be from the tough new laws farmers in Queensland will face as a result of the legislation passed in State Parliament this week.

QFF Chief Executive Dan Galligan said there have been hundreds of hours of negotiation between Government and industry over recent months, conducted in good faith by both parties, in an effort to make sense of an election promise to deliver a reef water quality target that is universally accepted as being unachievable.

“The science and common sense says that this target is almost impossible to achieve in the time frames suggested.”

Mr Galligan went on to explain that the outcome is, by the Governments own admission, a piece of legislation that has achieved all it could realistically do, by requiring producers to fill out paperwork associated with a range of farm practices that the industry has already been proactively adopting,

“The risk is a bureaucratic, consultant driven structure that will add a huge administrative burden to farmers and an overstretched environmental authority while stifling innovative solutions.”

Mr Galligan added that the $50 million dollar investment could have been applied to improving a collective understanding of how what happens hundreds of kilometres inland from the reef, may directly affect water quality on the reef years later.

“If this had occurred, we could have given real ownership of the solutions back to all land based industries and the community, instead we will have farmers filling out more paperwork for the sake of a politically driven objective.”

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