The beige dream and the "hobby farm"

Have you ever driven past one of those new housing estates that was once a large empty paddock? One of those beige blankets from hell that is pimpled with identical dwellings which house the beginnings of the great Australian dream? Think the Hills district... Or have you ever heard of one of those middle aged couples from Paddington buying a two acre property in Mudgee, buying a cattle dog and a cow thinking they own a hobby farm. But a year down the track a poisonous weed has sucked the life out of their "farm" (the cow) and the genuine articles around them all because they had no idea about how to maintain their over sized garden?

Back to those housing estates, have you ever driven past and thought "That would have been an ideal location to grow apples or graze some cattle"? No? Well neither had I... until now that is. The Standing Committee of State Development - Inquiry into Aspects of Agriculture in New South Wales discusses these concerns among others. The focus of this posting is the 24 September hearing, commencing at 11:00am. The witness in this hearing was Richard John Pearson - Executive Director, Rural and Regional Planning, Department of Planning.

Clearly agriculture contributes greatly to the economy of NSW, Mr Pearson makes this abundantly clear in his opening address, "It [agriculture] was worth $8.6 billion at 2003-04 and it contributes 87,000 jobs to the workforce...". Hence, the industry is worth protecting if not enhancing - that's why we can't have these huge housing estates being built on fertile soil and these ignorant cashed up 'tree changers' ruining properties by not caring for them properly. A strategic measure to reduce these cases is the local environmental plans (LEPs). My understanding of these LEPs is that councils outline their zoning plans for residential and agriculture land including restrictions and infrastructure. According to Mr Pearson all councils will have to have an LEP in place by March 2011.

The concern of this hearing was the lengthy process of getting approval for these LEPs and the obstacles in making amendments to a proposed LEP. Another concern was that both councils and so-called advisers don't have adequate knowledge of the soil quality and agricultural needs when putting these plans on paper.

From the outset, it was obvious that these committee hearings are vastly different from our old friend Question Time. If only for the fact that old white men in ugly suits aren't yelling at each other and trying to make their counterpart look like a dickhead. Here, the structure was more formalised and hence easier to follow than Question Time. The Chair opened the hearing, allowing Mr Pearson to make his own brief introduction and only once did the Chair have to use his authority to allow Mr Pearson to answer the Hon. Matthew Mason-Cox's question on amalgamated councils.

It was also quite obvious that each of the residing members had their own agenda from the get go and this clearly influenced their line of questioning. The Hon. Michael Veitch says, for example, 'Just so you know, I am also a councillor on Young Shire Council, which is serviced from Queanbeyan'. This fact creeps into Mr Veitch's questioning a number of times during the hearing, especially when asking about the Sydney-Canberra corridor strategy and the state of cherry growing in Young.

For all the formalities though, this hearing did have a couple of similarities to QT. Firstly, there was a lot of departmental buck passing. For the most part, this was from Mr Pearson (representing the DoP) passing some of the questions off to the Department of Primary Industries and at one point to the Department of Environment and Climate Change. Secondly, if only for a brief moment, a couple of the female members tried to get their back up and play it with the big boys. Of note is the Hon. Christine Robertson who questioned the validity of another member's question. I almost got goose bumps! I thought they were going to start throwing chairs and Steve from Jerry Springer would have to pull them apart.. but of course disappointment - this is, after all, the faded pastel political arena and so any tension or resentment is tightly bottled and dealt with diplomatically, only to be unleashed later on some unsuspecting intern....

This hearing was fairly interesting if only for educating me about the growth strategies of the agricultural industry. I mean, with the world entering the red zone last week - which means we have too many mouths to feed and not enough food - we should be trying to save areas of nutrient-rich soil. And these cashed up tree-changers can get stuffed! Move to Dural! Oh, that's right you can't because there's another frigging housing estate going up!