The March 1999 Elections
New South Wales votes on March 27th and like the past two state elections, a couple of marginal seats are likely to decide who will govern for the next four years.
The election is doubly hard to speculate about because the State’s 99 seats are being reduced to 93 with many electoral boundary adjustments to reflect that change. The further untested element is a new minor party on the conservative side of politics, which in the last Queensland election had considerable impact on the traditional conservative vote outside metropolitan areas.
In this climate you may think that the electoral influence of the concerned environment vote would have diminished to negligible. Not necessarily. For example in 1995 the regional seat of Bathurst was narrowly won by the ALP’s Mr Clough over the National Party candidate. Analysis of the vote tended to show that preferences of green and Democrat candidates had made the difference, despite the fact that this particular ALP member was much more the ally of mining than conservation interests.
Thinking back a little further to 1990, even with mortgage interest rates at record high levels, the environment vote, or more accurately its preference flow, played a major role in the re-election if the incumbent Federal Government who had made some important decisions in relation to the forests of southern Tasmania and tropical Queensland during their term in office.
Few hard policies have been released as yet by the parties for this coming NSW election. If you are contemplating how you might vote some of the party stances and records outlined below could help you decide. Remember that with rare exception the candidate ultimately elected to your seat will belong to a major party but it will often take minor party preferences to get them over the line. Therefore the best thing you can do for the environment is to make the major party earn these preferences by coming up with solid undertakings.
Labor holds 52 of the 99 State seats. They need 42 in the new reduced size parliament to govern alone.When in opposition between 1988 and 1995 the party was very accessible to members of the environment movement and leader Bob Carr was seen as generally sympathetic to environmental objectives. Quoted in the media only 4 days after the devastating defeat of the Unsworth Labor Government, Mr Carr, the former Environment Minister urged his party at a federal level to not weaken its support for conservation: "Performing strongly on the environment is worth doing for its own sake as distinct from vote catching" (SMH 23.3.88).
(giving with one hand)The Government has implemented elements of a strong coastal policy, with parks established or expanded at Eurobodalla, Jervis Bay, Tomaree, Billinudgel and Cudgen Lake. Around Sydney we have seen important Cumberland plain reservations like Scheyville National Park along with bushland areas like Dharawal State Recreation.
The Government’s forest and wilderness policies got off to an excellent start in 1995-96 with close to 300,000 hectares of State Forest and Crown land added to the park system in that period. A major assessment of the eastern forests of NSW was commenced in 1996 with the aim of identifying the areas required for protection in a world class forest reserve system.
Important laws were passed covering land clearing and threatened species. The Blue Mountains was recently nominated by the State and Federal Governments for listing on the World Heritage register. Finally the Warragamba side spillway has been approved and tendered.
(taking away with the other)The promised Marine National Park legislation was watered down substantially and the new system does not offer significant improvements in marine protection. The first reserves at Jervis bay and Solitary Islands are lacking in sanctuary ‘no take’ zones which are critical if these areas are to be considered real reserves and not just monitored playgrounds.
The forest assessment process, which commenced with so much promise, has produced disappointing results in the Eden and north east regions (see articles last issue). It is not just a case of finding a compromise between opposing interests. All states and the Commonwealth have been signatories to the National Forest Policy Statement for some years. The agreed platform in this statement was for a move into sustainable forestry practices, the first step of this move being the establishment of a reserve system which meets Australia’s commitments under international treaties on protection of biodiversity. In other words, the science was critical to this process. But the science was bypassed and the decisions to date have been political considerations.
A logging moratorium over identified wilderness has been lifted and critical areas like Chaelundi State Forest in Guy Fawkes Wilderness (the area with the highest recorded concentration of old growth dependent, tree dwelling mammals in Australia) remain without formal protection. The Wollemi Wilderness, the largest in NSW has still not been declared and moves to cut it into segments by the retention of the Hunter and Wirriba trails have been mooted.
The promised Demon National Park near Tenterfield was not delivered in the area designated and this area is now home to a huge open cut gold mine.
Detracting from achievements on the coast is the seemingly abandoned promise to add the intertidal strip to our coastal National Parks (they currently stop at the mean high water mark). This would have formalised control of beach use with the NPWS. The promised Stockton Bight coastal reserve has also not been delivered.
New planning laws passed by this Government have removed a number of environmental safeguards from development proposals.
The Liberal and National Party were last in power between 1988 and 1995. Some worthwhile achievements in conservation occurred, particularly during the period of minority government with the influence of independents like Terry Metheral and Clover Moore.The reservation of Nattai and Gardens of Stone National Parks saw the near completion of the long standing Greater Blue Mountains National Park proposal. Some major land acquisitions in the west of the State led to the creation of important new reserves like Gundabooka and Nombinne. established the EPA which has played an important role in detecting and combating environmental degradation. In the recent legislation passed to change the management authority for Sydney’s Water catchments after the giardia scare, the opposition supported green amendments which will provide a process for transfer of the catchments to the NPWS estate, including areas like the lower Kowmung and Kedumba valleys. The irony here was that the Government opposed this amendment despite it being ALP policy to transfer these lands at the last election.
The last conservative administration was particularly weak on forest and wilderness protection. In the Eden area for example the Fahey Government protected only 44,000 ha of forest in new reserves, compared with a further 78,000 by this Government.
The National Party have proposed the revocation of a number of the recent National Parks and degazettal of wilderness areas should they win office. New leader Mrs Chikarovski has not adequately distanced herself from these statements and during her time as opposition environment spokesperson backed such a stand on a couple of occasions.
Former leader Peter Collins pledged to proceed with raising Warragamba dam even if the side spillway was built. It is hard to say how likely such an expensive and redundant measure would be once the coalition were in power, but this position is none the less very unfortunate.
The opposition supports the building of a super highway through the Blue Mountains and the handing over of former National Park land at Bell - the Canyon Colliery to a private company who seek to establish an enclosed fauna park and use the mine works for tourism operations. This land retains high wilderness values over most of its area and is sought for return to the park with the mining company obliged by law to remove their infrastructure and rehabilitate the site to a natural condition. If the tourism project was granted the mining company is excused from such duties which we do not think is right.
The record of the Democrats, Greens, Better Future for our Children and the independents Richard Jones and Clover Moore on the environment is very strong. All of Confederatoin’s policies on natural area protection would find support with these members of Parliament. The shooters Party has a mixed record on environmental matters. Support for conservation has been well short of guaranteed by their member Mr Tingle.Call to Australia and One Nation Party have not offered significant support for environmental concerns and their records tend to show closer affiliations with traditional opponents of conservation. These two parties will be likely battling for one upper house seat with either Fred Nile or David Oldfield taking the spot.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to both punish and reward with your individual vote. The upper house cross bench candidates and minor parties who have kept faith with the environment deserve your support.
The major parties, one of whom will form a Government in the lower house will want your primary vote and if you won’t give them that, your second preference. Make them earn it: An end to woodchipping; protect the old growth forests and wilderness areas outlined by the environment groups; real marine National Parks; keep parks free of big tourism developments (especially Kosciuszco); provide greater funding for land acquisition.
If you feel strongly enough about helping generate a high environment vote, any of the conservation minded candidates or parties would be grateful for a phone call from you regarding help on the day.