By STEVE GRAY
THE Queensland government’s Darling Downs Regional Plan released last week has failed to impress either farmers or environmentalists.
Both groups say the plan fails to protect high quality agricultural land.
General president of peak farming group AgForce, Ian Burnett, said the Review of the Strategic Cropping Land (SCL) Framework failed to provide much needed assurance that the state’s best agricultural land will be unaffected by the booming resources sector.
“As AgForce pointed out in our submission to government, the Regional Plan Priority Agricultural Areas cover less than half of the current cropping area within the Darling Downs,” Mr Burnett said.
AgForce had called for an expansion of the agricultural areas covered by the Act and an increase in the levels of protection applied to irreplaceable high quality soil resources.
Instead the government has flagged a repeal of the Strategic Cropping Land Act and the downgrading of its provisions into regulations and codes that will sit under a new Act which is yet to be publicly released.
Changes contained in the plan define oil and gas pipelines and waste and water treatment facilities as community infrastructure and exclude them from assessment under the SCL Act.
Mr Burnett said AgForce will also continue to push for a greater say for landholders on what resources activities occur on their properties.
The Southern Downs Protection Group, part of the Lock the Gate movement, said the Darling Downs Regional Plan completely failed to address community concerns about protecting agriculture from coal and CSG developments.
Group president Sarah Moles said recommendations from hundreds of groups and individuals had been ignored.
“Significantly, the plan offers no definition of “co-existence”, the fundamental principle on which the plan is based,” Ms Moles said.
She said experience has shown that co-existence depends on the type of agriculture involved and the type of mining activity.
Ms Moles said another serious omission is the plan’s failure to put in place measures to protect human health.
“The Plan’s Priority Living Areas include buffers, but these are designed to accommodate future population growth and local governments will be able to approve resource developments within these areas if they see fit,” she said.
“It’d be an under-statement to say SDPG finds this bitterly disappointing.”
Queensland Greens’ Senator Larissa Waters was also critical of the plan.
“The Greens join Agforce and Lock the Gate in saying Premier Newman’s proposed laws are not adequate to protect Queensland’s precious farmland from coal and coal seam gas,” Senator Waters said.
“The Newman Government is still parroting mining industry spin that farming and coal seam gas can co-exist – they cannot.
“When the National Water Commission warns of long term damage to aquifers that underpin our best farmland, governments should take heed rather than just do Big Gas and Big Mining’s bidding and approve every project applied for,” she said.
Southern Downs Regional Council mayor Peter Blundell said the council was keen to see a much broader range of issues such as infrastructure requirements, strategic linkages with other regions within Queensland and interstate, and matters such as education and health.
“We will continue to work with the State Government to ensure that these issues are prioritised into the future,” he said.
