Tasmanian farmers have driven their tractors to Parliament House to protest against forestry regulation they say is fining them out of business.
The tractors rolled into Hobart from across the south-east and the Midlands, Huon Valley and Derwent Valley for the Thursday rally, which began at 11am.
The protest targets the Forest Practices Authority (FPA), which the farmers say hands out heavy fines for clearing trees on their own land.
Organiser Lindsay White said the campaign started just before June, after his friend William ‘Farlie’ Fergusson was fined $100,000 for what White described as taking down “a few trees” to install a centre pivot in a calving paddock.
White said he posted about the fine online and had more than 100,000 views within four days.
“I thought, hello, there’s something seriously wrong here that so many people have responded so badly,” he told the crowd of hundreds.
He said a King Island farmer was fined for clearing fence lines to fireproof his property, with the penalty reduced from $170,000 to $140,000, then to $100,000, with no reason given.
White said the authority had fined 50 farmers about $2 million over the past five years and would not say where the money had gone.
Fergusson’s wife, Melissa Ferguson, told the rally the couple never expected to be lobbying the government.
She said the family had farmed at Grindstone Bay on the east coast since the 1950s and that her husband now had a criminal conviction over farm works on their own land.
Ferguson said the trees were cleared in 2023, partly to make a sheltered paddock for calving heifers, during a year in which she was having chemotherapy, surgery and radiation after a breast cancer diagnosis.
She said the couple accepted they had not had a required forest practices plan and had cooperated fully, but that the process that followed was unfair.
Ferguson said the FPA board offered a prescribed fine of $132,000, even though its own officer put comparable cases at between $45,000 and $90,000.
She said the couple were never given a reason for the higher figure.
“The board thinks they are above justifying their actions,” she said, describing what she was told when the family asked how the fine was calculated.
Ferguson said the family offered to rehabilitate 27 hectares elsewhere on the farm, four times the area cleared, but were told they would still have to pay $82,000.
The matter went to court, where her husband pleaded guilty and was fined $100,000.
Ferguson said she had lost trust in the current FPA board and called on its members to resign.
The farmers want an independent review, simpler rules and compensation where land use rights are taken away.
Central Highlands farmer Will Bignell, from Thorpe Farm near Bothwell, told the rally the fight was about far more than farming.
“Every new rule on its own is always explained as something small. It’s just another form, another fee, another consultant, another inspection,” he said.
“But who is measuring what happens when you stack it all up? You have a wall.”
Bignell, whose family has farmed the same land for 202 years, said the problem was regulation built around the worst-case scenario.
“Good regulation manages risk. It doesn’t pretend risk can be eliminated,” he said.
“When every rule is designed around the worst possible operator, we end up regulating the good operators as though they’re bad ones and everybody pays the price for that.”
He said farmers who delivered environmental benefits on their own land were being left to foot the bill.
“Private land is privately owned. If biodiversity on someone’s farm provides the whole community a benefit, then the whole community should help pay for it,” he said.
“Don’t restrict what the owner can do and then send the entire bill to the landowner.”
Bignell said the state government could not set an agricultural growth target while regulating farmers out of the investment needed to reach it.
“You want a $10 billion agricultural industry? Great. Show us your numbers,” he said. “You’ve measured what you want from us – now start measuring what you are doing to us.”
The rally spilled into parliament, where the state government faced questions from both the opposition and the crossbench.
Shooters, Fishers and Farmers MP Carlo Di Falco asked Premier Jeremy Rockliff what he was doing for farmers.
The premier said he had seen the tractors parked outside and praised White for “rallying the cause”. He said he would meet White and other farmers this afternoon.
Rockliff said governments needed to ease the “red tape burden” on farmers but that regulation still needed to be “sensible and balanced”.
Deputy Labor leader Janie Finlay asked Primary Industries Minister Gavin Pearce whether he would support the independent review the farmers wanted.
Pearce did not commit to one. He said he heard the concerns “loud and clear” and had spoken to TasFarmers three times this morning.
He said the issue was structural and could not be fixed “with a wave of a magic wand”.
Pearce said he looked forward to hearing from the farmers and pointed to an inquiry already underway into land clearing at Rushy Lagoon.
The FPA, in a statement, said it was “aware of concerns” raised by some landowners about its investigation and enforcement activities.
Chief Forest Practices Officer Anne Chuter said the authority had a “responsibility to enforce the law” but was “committed to listening, learning and continually improving how we engage with the community”.
She acknowledged many landowners were “doing their best to understand and comply with what can sometimes be complex requirements”.
Chuter said the independent public regulator had commissioned an independent review of its investigation processes.
“The review will examine whether these processes and our decision-making are appropriate, proportionate, transparent and consistent with community expectations,” Chuter said.
“Independence is critical to the credibility of this work, so the review will be conducted at arm’s length from both the FPA and the regulated community, while still providing opportunities for stakeholders to contribute their views and experiences.”
Chuter said the authority was also working with TasFarmers to “review and improve our communication materials” and make information about land-clearing requirements “clear, practical and accessible”.
