Greens Demand Legislation Repeal After Data Reveals 16% Increase In Land Clearing In NSW

NSW Labor is facing renewed criticism over the state’s land clearing laws after new government data revealed vegetation clearing increased by another 16 per cent in 2024, prompting fresh calls for the Minns Government to repeal legislation senior Labor figures once strongly opposed.

The latest figures from the NSW Government’s annual Statewide Landcover and Tree Study (SLATS) show 81,293 hectares of native vegetation were cleared across the state in 2024, following a 40 per cent jump recorded the previous year.

The increase was driven largely by a sharp rise in non-woody vegetation clearing, with 57,190 hectares cleared, alongside 24,103 hectares of woody vegetation.

The NSW Greens have seized on the figures, announcing they will introduce a private member’s bill when Parliament returns to repeal key provisions of the Coalition-era land clearing laws introduced in 2016.

Greens environment spokesperson Sue Higginson said the latest data reflected exactly what Labor ministers had warned would happen when the legislation was first debated nearly a decade ago.

“When the National Party under John Barilaro took a chainsaw to our nature laws to enable runaway land clearing, Labor Environment Minister Penny Sharpe warned land clearing would skyrocket, wildlife would die and emissions will increase,” Higginson said.

“This is exactly what is happening under Labor’s watch and the Environment Minister is not fixing the laws that she herself condemned.”

Higginson questioned why ministers who had publicly opposed the legislation while in opposition had not moved to repeal it after taking government.

“Half of the current Labor Cabinet lined up to slam these laws when they were introduced, so what is stopping them from fixing them?” she said.

The Greens argue the state is now clearing the equivalent of 275 Sydney CBDs worth of vegetation every year, describing NSW’s deforestation rate as comparable with Indonesia’s.

The proposed bill would prohibit clearing in threatened ecological communities and threatened species habitat, abolish self-assessable land clearing codes, remove the controversial “Invasive Native Species” exemption and tighten biodiversity offset rules to require genuine like-for-like offsets.

Higginson said the current offset system allowed environmentally damaging outcomes.

“This would end the absurdity of allowing the destruction of native vegetation through offsetting where a proponent can destroy, for example, koalas and their habitat in Lismore in exchange for protecting sugar gliders in the Blue Mountains,” she said.

The latest criticism also revives comments made by several current Labor ministers during debate on the legislation in 2016. Then-opposition environment spokesperson Penny Sharpe warned the laws would lead to “significant increases in land clearing” and “the destruction of precious native vegetation in New South Wales,” while now-Roads Minister Jenny Aitchison said they would “increase broadscale land clearing, lead to further extinction of native animals and drive up greenhouse gas emissions.”

Environmental groups have also renewed calls for the Minns Government to scrap the Land Management Code’s “Invasive Native Species” category, which they argue continues to enable broadscale clearing across regional NSW.

“The NSW premier, Chris Minns, promised to rein in land-clearing but he has failed to prioritise it and the result is a predictable one,” the Australian Conservation Foundation’s Nathaniel Pelle told The Guardian, while Nature Conservation Council of NSW CEO Jacqui Mumford called for the Minns government to fix the vegetation rules which were relaxed under the previous Coalition government.