By PHILIP HOPKINS

 

THREE petitions signed by more than 66,000 Victorians opposing more national parks in Gippsland have been tabled in the state’s Legislative Council.

The Nationals Member for Eastern Victoria, Melina Bath, tabled the first petition of 40,208 signatures.

The Liberal Member for Northern Victoria, Wendy Lovell, said 13,969 Victorians had also signed a petition that was tabled by Wayne Farnham, the Member for Narracan.

“I have a petition that is still live that has 11,767 signatures on it at the moment. So that is over 66,000 Victorians – 66,044 Victorians – who have signed petitions saying they do not want new national parks in Victoria,” she said.

Ms Bath, who is the Shadow Minister for Public Land Management, said the historic petition sent a clear message to the Allan government: Victorians deserve public access to public land.

“Labor must preserve the status quo, preserve the current land tenure and not create any new national parks. What we want to see, what these 40,000 Victorians want to see, is our cherished national parks and our loved state forests and reserves open for public access,” she said.

“Responsible for public land management, the Allan government is a poor neighbour, and we know that from our bushfires and an inept public land manager. Visit any of our national parks, visit any of our state forests, and you will see overgrown tracks and you will see decaying infrastructure – if it is still there. A cash-strapped government is cutting frontline boots on the ground and neglecting forests, which leads to poorer environmental outcomes.”

Ms Bath said this was a perverse outcome.

“There are insufficient field staff, there are insufficient rangers and there are a proliferation of pests and weeds – and there is an ever-increasing threat of out-of-control bushfire,” she said.

“Coupled with the loss of our experienced timber workers and the bungled and botched transition, our regional communities are more and more at risk.”

Ms Bath said Parks Victoria had had $95 million gutted from its budget and a halving of its core services.

“Locking up more of our state forests as national parks serves no-one, and restricting Victorians from our traditional pursuits, such as free and dispersed camping, dirt and trail bike riding, horseriding, hunting, four-wheel driving, prospecting and fossicking, does not guarantee any better conservation of vulnerable species,” she said.

The country had evolved by First Nations people managing the land in the landscape.

The Labor Member for Eastern Victoria, Tom McIntosh, criticised the “mistruths” of the Liberals and the National Party campaign.

“There are two separate issues at hand, and the two have been conflated. There is the west of the state and there is Gippsland. The Nationals know the government has no intention to create national parks in Gippsland, but they have no interest in the truth,” he said.

“The Great Outdoors Taskforce is talking about how we grow regional Victoria, get better visitor experiences and more tourism and economic activity. In the west, in all three new national parks you will be able to go camping, fishing, hiking, four-wheel driving, trail bike riding and mountain bike riding. In all three national parks you will be able to go horse-riding, dog walking and undertake dispersed camping in specific areas outlined by the land manager. And in the new Wombat-Lerderderg National Park you will be able to undertake seasonal deer hunting in the areas that were previously state forest,” he said.

“We have found the right balance here to protect what needs to be protected, while keeping the land open and accessible for the activities that Victorians love. It is far from being locked up.”

Mr McIntosh said the disinformation campaign by the Liberal and National parties was cheap.

“The future use of public land should be debated and discussed by the community, but it should only be done with all the facts at hand,” he said so that all could work together to get good environmental and economic outcomes.

The Greens Member for Southern Metropolitan, Katherine Copsey, said Victorians love native forests, so it was no surprise that Victorians overwhelmingly want more national parks.

“Polling by RedBridge last October found a whopping 80 per cent of Victorians want more national parks. That is four in five Victorians who want more of these kinds of protection – an incredible level of popularity,” she said.

The member for Eastern Victoria, Jeff Bourman from the Shooters Fishers Farmers Party, said the public response to the issue clearly indicated how Victorians outside the ‘quinoa curtain’ feel about public land access.

“Victoria is the envy of the nation when it comes to access for hunters. Few places in the world enjoy the access that we do and want to keep,” he said.

“Hunting contributes $335 million to the Victorian economy and underpins over 3000 jobs. Victorian deer hunters take an estimated 140,000 deer a year, most of them on public land, and hunters tend to eat what we hunt too.

“This petition is really about the Greens proposal to lock up the Victorian Central Highlands into a massive new national park. Greens-aligned groups have been pushing for this since before I came into this place 11 years ago. The driving motivation used to be the end of native timber harvesting… that industry has effectively been killed off.

“As I warned the government at the time, giving these extremists what they want was never going to appease them; it was only ever going to embolden them. So having got what they wanted, why are they still trying to lock up this public land? Who are they trying to protect this land from? The only answer I can see is that they are trying to protect it from us, from people who they do not agree with and who they – frankly – look down their noses at.”

Ms Bath said she appreciated Ms Copsey’s love of the forests and national parks.

“What she failed to admit or understand in terms of the Central West investigation is that over 65 per cent of the public submissions to the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council were actually opposed to the locking up of those state forests into national parks,” she said.

“The government is not correcting its own homework because it has failed to produce the State of the Forests report, which actually looks at what it is doing in conservation. There is no report card on this, so the government therefore cannot be failing, but clearly it is.”