Biobashing developers windfall

Tuesday, 21 November 2006
Media Release

Biobashing a windfall for developers

The NSW Government’s biobanking legislation, which passed the NSW Upper House yesterday, is yet another windfall for big developers who donate generously to the ALP, and a loss for biodiversity conservation, according to NSW Greens Upper House MP Ian Cohen.

“The iron fist inside the velvet glove is a recurring theme with this Government’s environmental legislation,” he said.

“They think they can pull the wool over the eyes of the conservation movement by couching their pro developer legislation in pro environmental language.

““The Greens moved eighteen amendments in an attempt to improve the bill. Fourteen of these were rejected.

“The result is this poorly devised biobanking scheme which represents the very worst kind of off-setting system. It will facilitate and entrench the destruction of high conservation value vegetation in coastal and urban areas throughout NSW.

“It will be contained within a very weak regulatory regime. It will allow trading across wide geographic areas and it will allow offsets to later be offset themselves. It also fails to explicitly protect those offsets from damaging uses or to meaningfully protect them in perpetuity.

“It is appalling that such a deeply flawed system will be used to allow developers to bypass existing threatened species survey and impact assessment procedures, without any requirement for public exhibition or public participation whatsoever.

“Government claims that it is only a trial are irrelevant. Lost biodiversity cannot magically be restored if the scheme is declared a failure.

“Environmentally sensitive areas should be protected in their own right, not used and abused in a tawdry trade off that allows increased development elsewhere,” Mr. Cohen said.