New: Crown Lease Conversion Urgent Please help!

Your URGENT HELP is required to help prevent the conversion of 6,000 high conservation value Crown leases totalling hundreds of thousands of hectares including endangered woodlands and wetlands and 72,000 hectares of Identified Wilderness into private land from 1st July 2007 -- It's not too late.

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The recent history of public land administration in NSW is a catalogue of failures: failure to fulfil statutory obligations, failure to respond to conservation policy, failure to transparently manage public lands in the interests of the public.

• The current assessment process for Crown lands across the state is arbitrary and piecemeal and does not take account of standard assessment processes and the broadscale significance of the public land estate.
• The Crown lease sell-off began in 2004 and the future of over a million hectares of high conservation value land is now uncertain as a result.
• Despite assurances that no Crown lease would be converted if the environmental values harboured on it could not be adequately protected as freehold, high conservation value leases have been given the green light for conversion following a defective assessment process, leading to deficient covenants that cannot guarantee the protection of environmental values.
• National frameworks acknowledge the role of Crown lands as the primary source for providing protected areas to meet agreed reservation targets. With this in mind, assessments have been undertaken of Crown Reserves to determine areas suitable for inclusion in the formal reserve estate.
• Despite commitments from the NSW Government, many high conservation value Crown Land areas have still not been transferred to National Parks in North-east NSW, Brigalow Belt South and Nandewar.
• Despite being completed five years ago, the recommended outcomes of the Goulburn Sub-region Comprehensive Regional Assessment including transfer of 12,551 ha of Crown land to the National Parks estate, have not been implemented.
• The Department of Lands (DOL) is encouraging private commercial development of sensitive foreshore lands with little or no prior environmental assessment, locking up open space for commercial exploitation, and proposing to build luxury apartments and tourist facilities on local parks and reserves.

The Department of Lands undertakes assessments of parcels of Crown Land across the state  prior to allocating the land for public or private use.

These assessments are placed on public exhibition on the DOL website and vary in depth and breadth of assessment. There is no readily accessible summary of what assessments have already been undertaken, what the outcomes of these were, what assessments are coming up, or what strategy has been developed to prioritise Crown land assessments. Those assessments that are undertaken are made “prior to the allocation of Crown land” (DOL website 27.5.07), and are not contextualised within the Crown Lands estate, NSW conservation targets and programs, or bioregional conservation priorities. These assessments occur on a site-by-site basis, entail visits to the land in question, yet do not involve fauna surveys.

The competence of the Dept. of Lands to adequately assess these lands is seriously under question, as is the ad hoc manner in which both the inventory and assessments are undertaken. In the assessment of a parcel of Crown land at Burraga in June this year, the remnant woodland on the site was given only a “moderate” conservation rating, despite being, as the assessment attests, not a commonly occurring community, relatively free of weeds, structurally intact having been fenced from grazing stock, near by to much larger stands and containing oldgrowth specimens.

See if Lands are undertaking assessments in your area here.

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The Department of Lands has been developing “concept plans” for the commercial development of some of the minor ports under its control. The Crown Lands Division is in various stages of preparing development programs for the maritime precincts at Coffs Harbour, Tweed Heads, Port Macquarie, Forster-Tuncurry, Port Stephens, Ulladulla and Batemans Bay. All of these proposals involve significant extra development, and enclosure of open space on beaches, foreshores, parks and reserves for commercial use.

This issue has lately come to the attention of the media (“Run for it while the coast is clear” SMH 14.5.07) and communities are demanding that the Department be accountable to the public interest, as legislation requires them to be, rather than behaving like a corporation seeking quick profit from public assets.

See if Lands are calling for foreshore development in your area here.

In April 2007, the Illawarra Mercury reported that “A public notice in the Mercury on Good Friday this year gave notice of NSW Land Minister Tony Kelly's intention to grant a 52-year lease to Killalea Coastal Investments Pty Ltd for the development of three parcels of land at the state park.” (14th April, 2007). The company had only been registered six weeks previously.

The community is up in arms about the proposal, and have held public meetings slamming the Lands Minister for selling out the Park.

On the 17th April, Kiama Council noted in their minutes that Council had written a letter (presumably to the State Government) about the development:

The Killalea State Park is the only remaining coastal landscape separation between the urban area of Shellharbour City and Minnamurra/Kiama. In addition, the Park has high environmental values incorporating SEPP 14 wetlands, beaches, rocky headlands, sand spit and coastal vegetation. The protection and enhancement of these values, recreational and educational access should be a primary objective. Every effort should be made to ensure that these values are not a casualty in the process of income generation.  

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Following the Comprehensive Regional Assessment (CRA) of forests in the Northeast bioregion, the Government committed to filling some gaps in the reserve estate by transferring parcels of Vacant Crown Land identified as being High Conservation Value (HCV) to the National Parks estate. Around 70,000 ha of high conservation value vacant crown land (now Crown Reserve) was identified as required for the National Parks estate. Around 50,000 ha of that land has been transferred, but since the resurrection of the DOL, the process appears to have slowed or even halted.

Case study: Goolawah “State Park” 

The Minister for Lands, Tony Kelly, denied personally preventing the transferral of the iconic Goolawah reserve to the National Parks estate, despite being confronted with evidence to the contrary.

The then Department of Land and Water Conservation (of which the now Department of Lands was part) and then National Parks and Wildlife Service agreed to transfer the area in 2002. DOL reversed this agreement in 2004. The Minister told parliament in September 2006 that the decision not to fulfil this commitment to transfer Goolawah Reserve to the National Parks estate was made by Kempsey Council, but records from the Council contradict the Minister’s account. Kempsey Council minutes state that:

Goolawah is over 700 ha in size and contains coastal wetlands and littoral rainforest. Since refusing to transfer the area to National Parks, the Minister and his Department have declared Goolawah a “State Park.” This has been touted as a way to ensure the protection of the sensitive ecological values of Goolawah, but given recent moves to allow multi-million dollar development in the Killalea State Park in the Illawarra, all it will take is a decision by a Trust, and the consent of the Minister for Lands, for commercial development to occur in this iconic local remnant.

The Brigalow Belt South and Nandewar bioregions have yet to meet their reserve targets under the National Forest Policy Statement. Following the Western Regional Assessment reserve outcome in 2003, the Government committed, as it has for the coastal forest reserve agreements, to augment the reserve system by transferring high conservation value Crown lands to the National Parks system.

Four years on, this process too, appears to have stalled.

The Brigalow Belt South and Nandewar bioregions are two of the five highest priority bioregions for conservation in NSW, and two of 18 highest priorities in NSW. The 300,000 ha of protected areas created in these bioregions in 2005 following the Western Regional Assessment was long-overdue, but more protected areas are required for these heavily-cleared bioregions to meet minimalist conservation targets.

The State Government has failed to implement the findings and reservations proposed by the Goulburn Sub-Region Comprehensive Regional Assessment, completed five years ago. The proposals made by the then Resource and Conservation Assessment Council must be implemented, included:

• Transfer of 17 020 ha (including 2193 ha of the Little River Crown lands) to the formal reserve system in 19 new National Park reserves and 20 reserve additions.
• An additional six areas (1690 ha) for inclusion in State Conservation Areas.
• Transfer of 702 ha of Crown Reserve to State Conservation Area

The reserve proposals came largely from Crown lands, with a total of 12,551 ha of Crown land proposed for protection in the National Parks estate. Environment groups have since written to the Government pressing for resolution of this issue, with little success.

The Goulburn assessment acknowledged that there is so little unencumbered Crown land in the Goulburn area, that reserve targets cannot be reached from Crown land transfers alone. Yet even this basic first step has not been taken.

In addition, the RACAC identified 143 parcels of land as having conservation significance without recommending tenure change. The RACAC proposed that these areas could remain under the current tenure arrangements but that the Crown should retain them in perpetuity. Some of these areas are held under Crown lease and are now being offered for sale by DOL, with no mention of the Goulburn assessment.

If web-links are unavailable in the list below, please contact NPA Crown Lease Project Officer Georgina Woods to be put in contact: 49261641.

North Coast Environment Council

NPA Three Valleys Branch

Central West Environment Council

Friends of Pilliga

National Bridlepath and Wildlife Corridor Association

Oolong Sanctuary

Save Killalea Alliance (Killalea Reserve in the Illawarra)

Jetty Action Group (Coffs Harbour)

CROWN (Port Macquarie)

Total Environment Centre

Colong Foundation for Wilderness

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