I’m happy with that

I would like formally to announce, since they will not tell you, that the state government has withdrawn its proposed changes to regulations governing the use of chemical sprays that were to have come into force at the beginning of the year.

They were delayed for three months; they were supposed to have come into force on April 1 (which would have been appropriate) and now they have been set aside and the original regulations stand. I’m happy with that.

Regular readers of Tasmanian Country will be well aware that the Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association and 15 other industry organisations fought these changes, tooth and nail, on the basis they were bureaucracy gone mad.

In true Yes Minister fashion, the new regulations would have applied to farmers using sprays, but not to government staff or their contractors. Why?

Farmers have to use chemicals to control weeds, pests and diseases. They agree they should do so within a sensible regime that does not harm the environment and also does not affect their own competitiveness.

Soundly-based regulations of chemical use provide security for farmers who need to use sprays. They are aware of community concern relating to the use of chemicals. Poorly-drafted regulations do nobody any good, farmers or the community.

Why were government agencies and their contractors to be exempted from the ambit of the regulations? If they were to apply to farmers, why not to others who apply sprays? In any normal jurisdiction that would amount to discrimination,

The proposed changes would have imposed limits on the trace amount of elements detectable in drinking water that would have applied nowhere else in the world. Allowable levels of the herbicide glyphosate would have been 100 times more stringent than the rest of the country. The permissible level of the insecticide diazinon would have been more than three times tougher than the rest of the country.

Those regulations would have created a problem for Tasmania that no other state faced. That was unnecessary when there is a national consensus on chemical residue levels pending.

The government spent five wasted years working up their new formulae with little or no consultation with those groups most directly affected. Perhaps they figured they could ignore us but when it came to the Legislative Council it was another matter. The members of the Upper House backed farmers and refused to amend legislation that would have enabled the regulations to become law.
Our view is that the government should ensure regulations are rational and reasoned. The regulatory levels proposed in the draft regulations were clearly unreasonable.

As I said at the start, the new regulations were to have come into force at the beginning of the year. They were delayed for three months. We joined the other groups at a roundtable with the government in mid-March but there was no compromise and we learned nothing about what was going to happen. April 1 came and went and still we heard nothing. Now we have been told, very quietly, that the existing regulations have been extended indefinitely.

I guess that amounts to a victory for commonsense, but what an absurd path we have followed to get to this point.

Earlier on Tasmanian Times:

• New study queries pesticide safety levels. State land and waterways ‘still poisoned’