NSW Farmers' Conservation and Resource Management Chair Bronwyn Petrie says the New South Wales Biodiversity Conservation Act is delivering real benefits for the environment and must be upheld under any Federal Labor plan.
Ms Petrie was responding to a newly announced Federal Labor plan to extend Queensland-style native vegetation laws as a nation-wide benchmark for biodiversity management if elected as the next Federal Government.
Related reading: Qld tree clearing laws to go national under Labor
Ms Petrie said the current laws in NSW had attempted to re-establish a balance between agriculture and the environment.
"While they remain far from perfect, we believe they are superior to the laws which operate in Queensland and will fight tooth and nail for their retention under any national scheme," Ms Petrie said.
"They are based upon the findings of an independent, scientific panel which found that the former legislation delivered reduced biodiversity outcomes.
"Locking up country so that it cannot be used for productive purposes has been shown to deliver worse environmental outcomes than allowing for proper, practical and scientific landscape management."
"The laws in NSW provide some of the flexibility necessary to manage woody weeds and other threats to our environment. However, greater flexibility is still needed to ensure we get the upper hand on weeds which crowd out native species and pastures and leads to biodiversity loss."
Ms Petrie said NSW Farmers welcomed Federal Labor's commitment to financial incentives for farmers to protect areas of high biodiversity value but said they wouldn't support a policy where farmers were paid to farm weeds.
"Biodiversity stewardship payments must recognise the significant value of high biodiversity conservation zones and rewards farmers accordingly, allowing them to manage it to improve it for future generations," she said.
"We call on the recently re-elected Berejiklian Government to defend the state's biodiversity framework from any further interference by the Commonwealth.
"Having fought hard for changes to give farmers greater flexibility in adaptive landscape management, now is not the time to sit idly by while Canberra attempts to further erode States' rights."
Queensland: Our laws limit farmers
Meanwhile Queensland farmers have warned that exporting their controversial land clearing laws throughout the country could have dire consequences for food production while doing little in the way of additional carbon reduction.
AgForce General President Georgie Somerset said the livestock industry had already pledged to be carbon neutral by 2030 and Federal Labor had acknowledged this target.
"Cattle producers don't clear vast areas of land to raise livestock, but importantly manage their landscape holistically, similar to the way Indigenous Australians have been doing for 40,000 thousand years," she said.
"Farmers encourage a healthy regrowth and a balance between the different types of vegetation that are more representative of the open landscapes from the time of settlement.
"Farmers know that where management of the land is taken away from the people who understand it the most, feral pests and plants thrive, increasing the risks of wildfire, as greater fuel loads cause catastrophic burns which kill everything and set back country for decades.
"The end outcome of that process is not something anyone wants."
Ms Somerset said the Queensland vegetation management act was an unwieldy piece of punitive legislation that had been amended more than 40 times and had eroded the certainty that farmers need to make decisions on woody vegetation.
"The laws in Queensland punish farmers for restoring a healthy tree-grass balance rather than rewarding them for managing the vegetation on their land," she said.
"That's why when they were introduced in Queensland there were huge protests."
Mrs Somerset said that the Federal Government's recent announcement of a $30 million pilot fund to reward farmers for the biodiversity on their properties was a step in the right direction and AgForce welcomed the Opposition's bipartisan support for this fund.
"Queensland's laws limit what farmers can and can't do on their own land with harsh penalties for non-compliance, which encourages mediocrity rather than supporting innovation and good management," she said.
