The LNP will roll back the clock on laws designed to protect native vegetation if it wins next month’s state election. 

Scenic Rim MP Jon Krause says an LNP victory in Queensland would deliver vegetation management laws “broadly similar” to when the party was last in power, under former premier Campbell Newman. 

Mr Krause said the current rules impose “huge costs and uncertainty” on landowners and lock up land that should be farmed.

He said the LNP would not allow “carte blanche clearing”, but instead “get the balance right”.

It’s a message that is being well received by many in the agricultural sector, who fought tooth and nail against Labor’s reforms to the Vegetation Management Act, eventually passed in 2018. 

Fourth-generation Burnett Creek cattle farmer Glen Fearby said the government-issued maps used to regulate his land were often inaccurate and lacking detail.

“They’re pretty bloody rugged,” he said.

“The biggest thing is, we don’t know what we can and can’t do it.”

But environmentalists warn taking the axe to current laws could drive iconic species like the koala to extinction and make Australia an international pariah. 

The Wilderness Society's Gemma Plesman said that after the LNP rolled back vegetation laws in 2013, Queensland saw a four-fold increase in deforestation rates.

“Because of those lousy laws over 1.6 million hectares of forest and bushland were bulldozed,” she said.

“That's an area the size of the Gabba every three minutes being bulldozed. Queensland put Australia on a list of 10 deforestation hotspots along with places like the Amazon, the Congo and Borneo.”

Ms Plesman’s claims are backed by the government’s Statewide Landcover and Trees Study (SLATS) reports, which use satellite imagery to monitor clearing.

After a spike in clearing in 1999 when Labor first introduced the vegetation management laws, the reports show a steady decline from a peak of about 700,000 hectares cleared to a low of about 80,00 hectares in 2009.

From there, the numbers rise sharply again to almost 400,000 hectares of land cleared in 2015.

Ms Plesman described these figures as among “the best data internationally for detecting forest cover loss”. 

But Mr Krause questioned SLATS reliability, saying the reports were “one-dimensional” and did not take regrowth into account—an issue of “particular concern” in the Scenic Rim.

In 2018, the Palaszczuk Labor government expanded the definition of “high-value regrowth” to include land which had not been cleared for 15 years. 

During that period, the region has seen a decline in the number of dairy farmers and an increase in other sectors, including horticulture.

“As the nature of farming has changed, we’ve seen some blocks not farmed for some time as a result,” Mr Krause said.

“That land can be locked up forever—and that's not something I want to see.

“We have some of the best farming land in south-east Queensland, if not the whole of Queensland, and if there’s a potential to utilise that land then we should be doing that for agriculture.”

Labor is yet to announce a candidate for the Scenic Rim, but the member for the neighbouring seat of Ipswich West, Jim Madden, defended Labor’s record.

“Labor went to the 2015 and 2017 elections with a commitment to reintroduce sustainable vegetation management laws to better protect Queensland’s environment,” he said. 

“That’s what we’ve delivered”.

Mr Madden accused the LNP of “fearmongering” on issues such as creating firebreaks, which Labor did not change in 2018, and said the party’s approach to classifying high-value regrowth “was supported by ecological science”.

Mr Fearby, for one, said the landscape had changed since he took over the family farm 45-years ago.

“There’s a bloody lot more timber in this country now than there was when I come here in ‘75,” he said. 

The cattle farmer said he welcomed the LNP’s pledge to make vegetation management laws more simple and user friendly. Other locals flagged concerns.   

Opposition leader Deb Frecklington has publicly committed to reviewing and reforming the laws and has listed a raft of ambitions, including “restoring sensible property rights for landholders” and a “sensible definition of high-value regrowth vegetation”.

But Tamborine Mountain Landcare president Judith Roland said it would be hard to assess the LNP’s commitments without in-depth details. 

While some proposals sounded “reasonable in theory”, she said implementation could be problematic. 

Mr Krause said that the “precise mechanisms” of the new codes could only be developed with the levers of government and following consultation. For now, he said voters should judge the LNP on its record.

“We are saying we want to fix these issues,” he said.  

“I think given our track record of delivering in 2013 and defending those laws in 2016, people involved in agriculture—landholders, farmers, graziers—can know that we will do what we can.”