Memo - 13/3/2001

To: ...........4 Corners ABC TV

From: Tom McLoughlin, Friends of the Earth, Sydney

Re: clearing rates in NSW, 4 Corners Programme 12/3/2001 "Water pressure"

Dear ........

Thought your show was a great and incredibly timely contribution and reporting of comments from Tim Fisher of ACF as quite profound. ........

However I have a [constructive] criticism of one narrow aspect. You stated there is 30,000 hectares of clearing "in NSW" per year. This is way underestimated .....

The truth is more like 100,000 ha or more every year for many, many years has been cleared. This in a state historically "over developed" and over cleared ahead of most other parts of Australia - as your show acknowledge.

What is the evidence ...? [We refer to] "Land clearing controls remain despite condemnation" of 21 July 1999 sourced to ....[the] ABC Radio News quoting the NSW Land Minister, Richard Amery. In particular some simple mathematics show that proportionally, based on Lands Minister Amery's own figures, for 12 months up to mid 1999, area cleared "in NSW" was about 102,000 hectares. For the 18 months to mid 1999 the area cleared was 153,360 ha (based on the area applied for was "213,000 hectares, in the last 18 months" of which "almost 72 per cent was cleared"). These figures themselves under report illegal clearing which probably can only be really known by periodic comparison of satellite imaging.

The Minister and department have just announced figures for the year 2000 which claim clearing is down to about 77,000 ha "in NSW" which I find dubious and I think 34,000 ha "in the Western Division of NSW" - as reported .....on ABC Radio Broken Hill - see attached summary transcript ..... Again these figures don't seem to cover illegal clearing.

Your figure of "30,000 hectares in NSW" looks more like just the Western Division (thus excluding central and eastern divisions of NSW). Granted you were focussing only on the Murray Darling catchment, but even so this should aggregate areas of land cleared in western AND central division of NSW - much more than 30,000 ha.

Granted again - the general viewer still got the point - crazy clearing rates still and probably don't understand the significance of the range of various "big numbers".

.....As you can see, on the govt's own figures, they are allowing great rates of clearing and the suspicion surely is that Mr Carr's aspirations for "Country Labor" overide a sustainable environmental future.

Yours truly, in support of the public broadcaster,

Tom McLoughlin, NSW policy officer, Friends of the Earth Sydney