Graziers' Land Too Cheap, Meeting Told
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday October 9, 1992
Sixteen hundred graziers pay little more than $2 million to lease 42 per cent of the land area of NSW.
The Western Land lease rentals were a rort perpetrated on taxpayers by successive governments and Western Land commissioners, a conference was told this week.
Speaking at the Australian Rangelands Conference in Cobar - the biggest meeting of its kind ever held in Australia - Dr John Pickard, a lecturer in environmental planning at Macquarie University, said taxpayers were unknowingly subsidising the graziers of the Western Division.
He said that despite complaints from graziers that high rentals were stifling progress, the rents were probably the lowest of the fixed costs of running a property.
"In overall terms, even in bad times, the rents are very, very low," he said.
"The graziers have major problems, they are caught between constant returns for their wool and spiralling costs. Increased rents would add to their burden, but why should the rest of the community subsidise them?"
The system evolved at the end of last century. In the late 1890s, recession, drought and the cumulative impact of overstocking - not dissimilar from the situation today - ruined many graziers.
A royal commission led to the Western Lands Act, which came into force in 1902, and the Western Lands Commission was set up. Today, 93 per cent of the Western Division is still leasehold.
Professor John Chudleigh, of the Orange Agricultural College, said that despite pastoralists' concerns about the sustainability of their holdings, they were often forced by economic circumstances to stock at all levels, which led to degradation of vegetation.
He said that if a genuine attempt was to be made to match the economic imperative of commercial land use with environmental responsibility, changes to the tenure restrictions of pastoral lands appeared to be necessary.
© 1992 Sydney Morning Herald
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