On 28 June 2013 Carol Vernon, The Greens candidate standing in Cowper at the forthcoming federal election, expressed some satisfaction with the final form of the O’Farrell Coalition Government’s Local Land Services Bill which was passed by the NSW Parliament on 27 June.
NSW Labor’s Steve Whan was taking a very different stance on this piece of legislation in a letter to the editor published in The Daily Examiner on 12 July 2013:
As some or your readers might be aware, the State Government's Local Land Services (LLS) legislation has passed the NSW Parliament. As of January 1 next year the LLS will replace the current Livestock Health and Pest Authorities and Catchment Management Authorities.
The NSW Labor Opposition has opposed the LLS for a number of reasons. The first is that the new bodies are already hamstrung by mass sackings of frontline and DPI staff and huge ongoing budget cuts to services for farmers.
As shadow minister I have serious reservations about whether a single entity can incorporate the work conducted by the LHPAs and the CMAs - two completely different organisations. Labor attempted to amend the LLS legislation to make its role clearer on both farm services and catchment management operations - the government did not support these changes.
Another major problem we tried to resolve was the balance between locally elected representatives and ministerial-appointed representatives on LLS boards.
Farmers made it very clear they did not support the model proposed by the government of four appointed and only three elected board members.
I attempted to make the boards 50% elected by local land holders and 50% by ministerial appointments - to ensure that local farmers and ratepayers had a direct say in the farm "face to face" services. These proposed changes were defeated by the government and the Nationals.
Unfortunately the Nationals once again have sold out rural NSW by failing to support this amendment and by meekly complying with the decimation of the face-to-face extension officer network.
Because the Nationals have let rural NSW down again there are now less on-farm services, less local specialist agronomists than at any time since Labor set up the extension officer network in the 1940s.
Over the past decade the NSW Nationals have made a deliberate effort not to preselect farmers for State seats and it is now starting to show. The few older backbench Nationals in the Parliament said very little in this debate. The "new breed", with no primary industries experience, just parroted the lines the Minister gave them.
History shows us that the Nationals in government are great at blaming other people but hopeless at delivering - this Government is unfortunately even worse, they are actively ripping out services from agriculture and rural communities.
Steve Whan MLC
Shadow Minister for Primary Industries
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