Please note: This is an extract from Hansard only. Hansard extracts are reproduced with permission from the Parliament of Tasmania.

WEED MANAGEMENT BILL 1999 (No. 87)

Second Reading

Mr LLEWELLYN (Lyons - Minister for Primary Industries, Water and Environment - 2R) - Mr Deputy Speaker, I move -

That the bill be now read the second time.

Mr Deputy Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to provide for the protection of the State's primary industries, environment and recreational areas from the impacts of declared weeds. The Weed Management Bill 1999 is based on a model detailed in WeedPlan which the member for Braddon, Mr Bonde, launched some time ago. The Tasmanian weed management strategy is an underpinning component of that strategy. The bill replaces the existing Noxious Weeds Act 1964. The Noxious Weeds Act 1964 does not reflect contemporary thinking with respect to community weed management programs. It does not provide for the development of a management plan for a specific weed before its proclamation as a declared weed under the act. This is essential if the proclamation of a weed is to result in its long-term management.

The bill updates existing weed legislation in terms of terminology and general structure; clarifies some working definitions; makes the legislation more user friendly. A rigorous scientific and consultative declaration process is required in the bill, ensuring that there are valid and scientifically sound reasons for a plant being declared under the legislation.

Mr Deputy Speaker, the bill has been subject to extensive consultation and is important in supporting the efforts of both the State and community groups undertaking weed management operations. Can I say there has been a heck of a lot of calls for the actual legislation to be finalised and implemented. The objectives of this bill further the objectives of the resource management and planning system - RMPS - of Tasmania. The bill defines a new consultative and objective process for declaring weeds that is based on the preparation of a ministerial statement of intent - SoI - to declare a species. The SoI is a dossier on the plant species in question, including the results of an objective weed risk assessment and information on economic, environmental and social effects/impacts of the plant.

A significant improvement to the Noxious Weeds Act 1964 is the necessity for declared weeds to have a documented weed management plan - WMP - attached. Once a plant becomes a declared weed based on the SoI, a management plan must be finalised within twelve months otherwise the declaration will lapse. This ensures that not only is there a sound scientific basis for declaration, but that appropriate actions accompany a declaration that will minimise the risk of the declared plant to Tasmania. Weed management plans will be the product of extensive consultation and can be initiated by government or other organisations, including community groups.

In addition to inspector appointments within State and local government, provision is made to appoint outside of these sectors. There is a requirement for appropriate competency for appointed inspectors. The bill includes an infringement mechanism enabling inspectors to issue on-the-spot fines for defined offences. An inspector can order appropriate action to be taken against a declared weed as long as it is consistent with a weed management plan.

It is in the interest of Tasmania that plants that pose a significant weed threat to the State are appropriately managed. As a result, this bill has four key elements: firstly, it minimises the deleterious effects of weeds on the sustainability of Tasmania's productive capacity and natural ecosystems; secondly, it promotes a strategic and sustainable approach to weed management; thirdly, it encourages community development in weed management; and finally, it promotes the sharing of responsibility for weed management between the different spheres of government, natural resource managers, the community, and industry in Tasmania.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I commend the bill to the House.

Ms PUTT (Denison) - Mr Deputy Speaker, I have some concerns about this legislation which has been brought to me by the Tasmanian Conservation Trust.

In essence they dispute the assertion that there has been extensive consultation - if there has been it certainly has not been as their understanding of that - and they have a number of other problems in particular that a huge onus of responsibility is put onto community groups away from government and that really it is a way of government passing a buck in many instances.

They are also extremely worried about the lapse of a declaration after one year if there is no management plan because we know full well that resources and bureaucracy are not always forthcoming and things move slowly and it is highly likely that we will under this situation get a lot of lapses of declarations - that is, that lapse will not work to make people move faster, it will actually work to keep taking weeds off the list.

I will read into the Hansard the letter which the Tasmanian Conservation Trust sent to the team leader on weed management with a copy to Dr Allan Harradine, which was sent on 8 April 1999. When they provided this to me, when the bill was introduced on 5 October, they said that as far as they knew this was still the situation. It says:

'Dear Andrew,

Weed Management Bill 1999, Version 2

I refer to the consultation draft the Weed Management Bill, provided to members of the TWMC for comment.

Before dealing with the content of the draft bill, I would like to make it very clear that the TCT is far from impressed with the process of consultation in preparing the draft. I draw your attention to Action 7.2 in WeedPlan which clearly states: "Review current weeds legislation to ensure that legislation is consistent with the principles of WeedPlan." I am not aware of any such review process. The first thing the TCT knew of the existence of the Weed Management Bill was when we were provided with a copy in mid-March inviting our response by 9 April 1999. This is hardly a review process.

WeedPlan cannot be seen as providing a legislative review as it only highlights key issues that such a review should address. For example, Action 7.1 in WeedPlan states: "Obtain legal advice on landholder's responsibilities for damage by weeds spreading from their properties." We have not been provided with this legal advice or how it may relate to review of weed legislation.

In our view it is not acceptable to produce the draft legislation in secrecy without any reference to the TWMC or more importantly the Tasmanian public. If we are incorrect in our assumption that there is no review process we apologise in advance' -

but as I say, they did not have another letter on file to say anything about that and they asked that they be provided with the review documents.

'We draw your attention to the excellent public consultation that your colleagues put in place in the development of the Water Management Bill. There is no reason why you should not have done the same thing.

While not wanting to go into detail at this stage on the draft bill' -

and I will just summarise here. They said that there was no reference in the draft, at that stage at any rate, to the resource management and planning system of Tasmania and that the sustainable development objectives must underpin this legislation, as is the case in the Water Management Bill. I see that your second reading speech says that the objectives are to further the objectives of the resource management and planning system, so if that has been inserted then that is obviously a positive change.

They asked that the Tasmanian Weed Management Council regain control of the process of developing the Weed Management Bill - and I would like to hear whether that actually happened - and that a discussion paper be prepared as to why we need a new bill and what it might contain.

'Most importantly the discussion paper should relate to WeedPlan. The discussion paper should then be endorsed by TWMC and given the widest possible public distribution calling for comments. Once these are received a first draft of the legislation can be prepared and again circulated, as was the case with the Water Management Bill, for public comment. Then and only then should the draft legislation be put forward to the government for inclusion in the Parliamentary timetable.'

So clearly there were big problems with the process in April of this year. It had started off on a bad foot as far as the conservation movement was concerned. I would like to hear from the minister as to whether a step back was taken and it was returned to the Tasmanian Weed Management Committee to have control of the process and whether we ever did actually get a discussion paper and a general public call for input as opposed to going to particular selected groups.

I am also extremely concerned about the onus of responsibility being put onto community groups. It is one thing to say, yes, let us encourage people to be involved, it is another to farm out your responsibilities because you are not going to do it yourselves - and that is what this is tending to and that is the feedback that I have had: that it is basically government, under the guise of updating our weeds legislation, actually making things probably less effective in terms of what is going to happen.

I would like know exactly what community groups are expected to have, what level of expertise, and to do what, and what the government will be contributing in terms of time, energy and resources so that we get a clear picture of who is actually being relied upon to implement this thing. Let us hope that it is not simply, 'Let us get a whole lot of free work out of community groups who may be able to deliver the results, and may not'. You know it is patchy about where community groups operate and it probably does not always equate to where weeds are. While it is laudable to involve the community, it is not laudable to try and palm off your responsibility onto them.

I am concerned about the lapse of the declaration after one year because I believe that will actually lead to a lapse in a lot of declarations rather than to an efficiency of process. If you want an efficiency of process then you tell us the amount of extra money that you are putting into weed management that has not been there in the past and will be forthcoming from here on in. That is how you get results; you actually have the money to put the people out there and do something. We all know that this sort of incentive does not work. I also believe that there is no process for public nomination of weeds, again a serious concern. There needs to be that process if it is not in here.
I would appreciate if the minister did go through what the process is for the declaration of weeds. Is it you, Minister, who declares them? Does the Weeds Management Committee advise you? Is it incumbent on you to take up their advice?

Mr Llewellyn - I said in the second reading speech the weeds management plans would be the product of extensive consultation -

Ms PUTT - That is the management plans not the nomination of weeds because at the moment we have had a problem in the State where weeds that are a problem to primary producers have had a high priority over environmental weeds. Of course, this is a matter of significant concern to the conservation movement which would like to be in a position to make nominations where government fails to do so. We want to know as well why you have not taken the same approach to other weeds as on pampas grass and whether it is now intended to do so, because that has obviously been a high-profile campaign in the public mind and has generated a lot of significant activity. I have a response to a question I had on notice about pampas grass, outlining the range of initiatives under way at the moment in the State on that, and in particular that outbreak around the Zeehan area which is of extremely pressing concern.

Those are the major issues I wanted to raise with you, Minister. I do hope that the problems that the conservation trust had with the process have been rectified. When I spoke to them, the person I spoke to was not aware that they had been, and in fact had been so frustrated by the way the process had been carried out that they had virtually decided it was not worth trying to interact with the government on this particular issue because of the upside-down, peculiar approach that was being taken.

Mr BONDE (Braddon) - The Opposition supports this bill. I welcome it coming before the Parliament before the next seeding season and I know there are concerns about consultation. To my knowledge there has been very extensive consultation about this matter, going right back to before I was minister, while I was minister and no doubt since the present minister has been here. I think it does something that I have always believed needed to be done, in section 14(1) where it gives an authorised officer the power to call somebody in to -

Mr Llewellyn - What section was that again, Bill?

Mr BONDE - 14(1) where the authorised officer - I am applauding that section so you do not have to worry about it. It gives an authorised officer the power to call somebody in to do the work if the owner does not get around to doing it. But of course the attribute of that section is that it gives the authorised officer the power to do something about the weeds, instead of going through the courts. That may take anything up to twelve months and of course by then the weeds have long since seeded and caused a nuisance to adjoining landowners. I applaud that section; it gives quite a deal of authority to authorised officers.

I am a bit concerned about right of entry in clause 38. While I realise of course that officers need to be able to enter premises, the way I read this - and the minister may be able to put me straight when he gets up to sum up - it looks as though an authorised officer can just wander onto somebody's place at will, without even notifying them he is there, and the first thing they know about it is when someone comes out and serves an infringement notice on them. So perhaps, Minister, you could clarify that for me. I have no problem at all about authorised officers having access; that is more than police actually have for stolen property or something like that. I am certainly not going to die in a ditch over that. I just think as a matter of workability - if that is a correct word - there needs to be some requirement that the authorised officer be diplomatic about it. I believe most officers would be but I can see a circumstance where there is a bit of ill feeling between an authorised officer and a landowner and there could be action taken that could cause a deal of concern.

I am not quite sure about the exemptions in clause 60 - exactly what they are. Perhaps the minister could sum that up while we are on the job. Clause 9(1), the order of declared weeds - I just hope that this is practical. We have been through all this before with the old act. We had a Noxious Weeds Act and we had a noxious weeds list and I think there was a requirement under that act for anybody with a noxious weed to have to eradicate it. In many cases it was wellnigh impossible to eradicate. Ragwort is one that comes to mind and that was eventually taken off that list. According to 9(1), there is a list of reasons why a plant can have an order as a declared weed. Anything could come into that - radishes could come into that, or a whole range of weeds. I would expect that, in accordance with WeedPlan and in accordance with the training we have already in the community, authorised officers, that it would be handled in the right way.

While I am on the job, I would just like to mention a problem with pampas grass. The original pampas grass that was brought to Tasmanian by the Forestry Department, I think it was - it might have been the Department of Agriculture - can only be propagated by root cuttings. Then, because that was a very slow process, some bright spark decided they would get seeds from New Zealand - and of course the original ones do not seed; the new ones do. Dr Harradine, who has been around this game for a long time, will probably be able to tell you that I am wrong, but I am advised that the original pampas grass we had does not seed. Then somebody decided that was too slow, we were not getting enough pampas grass in, so they brought in a seeding variety from New Zealand, I understand. That took off better than we had ever anticipated and certainly better than we wanted. Now we have a circumstances where one particular farmer -

Mr Llewellyn - Yes. He's written to me about it and Tony Fletcher wrote to me about it as well. I have written back to him. It's a very difficult problem because who knows the difference between these plants any more? Unless you eradicate them all?

Mr BONDE - No, I understand, though, that you can pick them easily at seeding time.

Mr Llewellyn - No, not easily.

Mr BONDE - Well, that is my advice. I never planted pampas grass, because by the time I got around to thinking about it, it was spreading out into crown land and all over the place. I decided it would not be all that brilliant an idea because I could see that one day somebody would have to say, 'We don't want any more of this'.

There is a case on Flinders Island that perhaps the minister could comment on for me. I understand they have not done much about eradication over there. On mainland Tasmania - I know from around where I am, I think it was Forestry, it might be DPIF -

Mr Llewellyn - No, Forestry Tasmania have been doing it.

Mr BONDE - Forestry Tas, was it? They have been doing a lot to help farmers get rid of it. But apparently on Flinders Island there has not been a program so far. I do not know whether that is right or not but if there has not maybe that is something the minister could look at.

As I said, I am very pleased to see this bill in the House now because with any sort of luck we can get it through the Legislative Council and get it enacted in time for this year's seeding season. The plain simple fact of life about weeds is that some people do not care about weeds. They let them seed year after year and it is grossly unfair as far as the next-door neighbours are concerned. Perhaps the minister could also comment on what liability there is for government or local government instrumentalities to abide by this act because I think that the governments, Federal, State and local, have their share of weeds that cause a problem, local government particularly. I notice the people who took over Tasrail have a very refreshing attitude towards weeds on their property and they have done a lot, particularly down our way, to eradicate the weeds there and right through the north of the State. As I have said, they have a very refreshing attitude, a bit different to when it was owned by ANR.

I do not know whether Ms Putt, the member for Denison, wants to go into Committee but I think perhaps the minister might be able to address those concerns; they are about the only ones I have. Otherwise the Opposition supports the bill.

Mr LLEWELLYN (Lyons - Minister for Primary Industries, Water and Environment) - Madam Deputy Speaker, just trying to run through the questions that were raised by the members on the other side, I thank them for their support although I am not sure exactly what -

Ms Putt - Well, I support improving weed management. I am not just sure that this does it, that is all.

Mr LLEWELLYN - Okay. Well, I thank you for your qualified support anyway.

In regard to consultation I am informed that initially on the weed management strategy there were over 90 submissions received. The TCT was a member of the ministerial working group that put WeedPlan together and the new bill reflects, directly, the issues raised in WeedPlan. The TCT is also a member of the Tasmanian Weed Management Committee established by WeedPlan and of course -

Ms Putt - We know all this.

Mr LLEWELLYN - that committee is charged with overseeing the weed management in Tasmania.

Ms Putt - Yes, but they didn't produce this bill.

Mr LLEWELLYN - The committee was consulted during the drafting of the bill and had two opportunities to comment on a draft of the bill including - and can I say this with sincerity - a meeting which was a full-day meeting which they were advised about and they knew about. They did not attend this meeting and they did not attend the other meetings. That is the reason why they have -

Ms Putt - Was that prior to April or post April? That is the key matter, isn't it, because in April they were really dissatisfied with what had occurred up until then.

Mr LLEWELLYN - It would have been post April, I would have assumed, because the draft -

Ms Putt - I think not.

Mr LLEWELLYN - Anyway I can find out a little bit more about that, maybe in Committee if you want to ask some questions about that specifically.

I am also further advised that the Weed Management Committee includes a number of representatives, obviously, and one of those representatives is a community weed representative. This member also has consulted with community groups on the bill and has supported the current bill that we have in front of us.

Can I say, and I repeat what I said in the second reading speech - although it was not in the speech but I ad libbed a little bit in giving the second reading speech; I said that community groups had been lobbying strongly for this new legislation so that it can back up the work that they are doing on the ground, and that is the case. Women in Agriculture, for instance, I think as early as February this year, were really lobbying me very hard to try to pursue this issue and try to get it into the autumn session at the beginning of the year.

Ms Putt - I'm not disputing that community groups want strong legislation on weeds and an upgrade. I think we all want that. But there is obviously a dispute about whether this does it.

Mr LLEWELLYN - Anyway, nomination of weeds for declaration - that is in fact up to the minister to ask for a statement of intent for community consultation -

Ms Putt - And is there a process for members of the community to nominate?

Mr LLEWELLYN - and anybody, either through the Tasmanian Weed Management Committee or separately, any group can certainly put their points to the minister in order to initiate that process and certainly I would be very -

Ms Putt - But there is no formalised recognition in the bill of a process for anyone in the community to nominate a weed and have it assessed?

Mr LLEWELLYN - No, it is a process that needs to be initiated at a ministerial level but certainly there are no problems about putting in place a process to actually get -

Ms Putt - It perpetuates the problem of only having some weeds dealt with.

Mr LLEWELLYN - Yes - to get these weeds dealt with. I would be very supportive of a process there. The Weed Management Committee obviously would be advising me about those matters as well, so I would act on that advice.

Mr Bonde made mention, I think, of clause 38, Entry and search. This is based on similar provisions, I am advised, as in the quarantine legislation. So it sort of mirrors the quarantine legislation. Subsection (2) however limits the power to enter residential premises and I think I also saw the word 'reasonable' in there too which heavily qualifies that. Section 9 - the bill takes a more practical approach to weed management than the Noxious Weeds Act. It allows the action taken on a specific weed to be tailored to a specific situation or location. This means a weed may be eradicated from one locality and simply contained in another area rather than force everyone to eradicate it. I guess you could give examples of how that has happened in some locations as well - pampas grass would be an example of that, although we are trying to eliminate pampas grass altogether and can I say in regard to that I am advised - and I certainly advised our ex-employee from Circular Head who did plant a lot of pampas grass -

Mr Bonde - I didn't say who it was.

Mr LLEWELLYN - in a letter to him that it is very difficult in fact to identify the differences, and even the scientists and people familiar with weeds have to take the various varieties and analyse them before they can actually tell the difference.

Mr Bonde - But if one lot doesn't seed and the other lot does -

Mr LLEWELLYN - Yes, I know, but if you have one that can produce pollination - 25 kilometres I think is the radius it can operate within -

Mr Bonde - That's what those Kiwis sent us!

Mr LLEWELLYN - then you are in real trouble and you do not know whether you have eliminated that one or one that is not a problem. So it really leaves us with a situation where we have to eliminate everything otherwise we will not be certain, and that is the problem.

Ms Putt - Is that yellow tree on the Midland Highway to do with gorse or is that just my imagination?

Mr LLEWELLYN - To do with gorse?

Ms Putt - Yes - why is the tree painted yellow?

Mr LLEWELLYN - I think the yellow tree is the same as the red tree -

Ms Putt - Oh, right.

Mr LLEWELLYN - it was trying to highlight the issue of Landcare.

Ms Putt - I just noticed that it was in an area where there was lots of yellow flowering gorse, the same colour.

Mr LLEWELLYN - That is a particularly bad area I have to say, in the midlands for the weed gorse. You do not notice it so much as in the flowering season of course, but when it is in peak flowering season every time you go up that highway you see the immense area that is actually covered with gorse.

In regard to the responsibility of State and local government managers for property that is held by the State or local government, the bill binds them just as if they were private landowners. I know I probably have not answered all the question of the member for Denison particularly but I have tried to answer as much as I can. There may be some sections where she might want to ask me other questions.

Ms Putt - I actually don't want to go into Committee.

Bill read the second time and taken through the remaining stages.