Labor resorts to tricks to smear farm sector

LAST week, the Palaszczuk Government resorted to some familiar tricks to distort vegetation management data, in another dishonest attack on the Queensland agriculture sector.

Labor’s fearmongering was designed to trash the reputations of Queensland’s farmers and landholders.

The 2015- 16 Statewide Landcover and Tree Study ( SLATS) report contained some misleading and incomplete data sets. To understand the SLATS report, you actually have to put an effort into understanding what type of vegetation management occurred, where and for what purpose.

Quoting global figures without any context is just base politics. The Palaszczuk Government is more interested in green preferences than the truth. For example, the SLATS report fails to differentiate fodder harvesting – an oversight that is likely to have a huge impact on the figures.

With more than 80 per cent of Queensland drought declared for the whole of this SLATS reporting period, the deep and widespread drought conditions are undoubtedly responsible for high reported rates of management ( fodder harvesting) in mulga bioregions and associated catchment areas.

Further, the claim that 93 per cent of vegetation management resulted in pasture is clearly false.

One thing the SLATS report is silent on is the total amount of vegetation growth and thickening across Queensland – because the fact is that trees grow. That might be difficult for Labor MPs and green activists to understand.

ANDREW CRIPPS, Member for Hinchinbrook.