JOHN HAYWARD
The first thing to understand about the Protection of Agricultural Land Policy is that it is no such thing. It is all about the radical forestry offensive that began around 1997 with the 20/20 Vision for Plantation Forestry, the Regional Forest Agreements, and the MIS scams.
I first encountered what later became PAL at an RPDC hearing in 1998 where the Forest Protection Society (later TPA) and Private Forests Tasmania referred to a new draft planning policy which designated rural areas generally as “industrial zones” reserved for activities such as forestry and farming. They described a system reminiscent of South African Bantustans where all other sectors of the public were expected to live in towns and cities.
The RPDC commissioners at the hearing indicated they had never heard of the draft policy, though they were otherwise very disposed toward all the forestry arguments. It emerged much later that the Meander Valley had unofficially and so quietly adopted what was then termed the PAL policy in 2000 that some councillors were unaware of its existence.
Zoning regulations everywhere have normally restricted the subdivision or other alienation of rural land. The extraordinary aspect of PAL was that it classified as agricultural land what is by far agriculture’s the most voracious competitor for land – plantations. PAL also operated to exclude forestry’s main competitors for smaller blocks of rural land -lifestylers and hobby farmers.
We are now in a situation where over 450,000 ha of Tasmanian rural land is under the easements to forestry known as Private Timber Reserves, in which conventional agriculture is prohibited. Much of it is also part of the disastrous MIS program collapsing around the country. That this scam is described as the protection of agricultural land has to be one of the baldest-faced frauds on earth.
The policy, and all the venal, spineless, and stupid pollies who promulgated it, deserve the fate of the Dodo.
