Colong Foundation for Wilderness

Media Release

19 March 2007 

Major parties’ environment election promises score poorly

Morris Iemma and Peter Debnam’s environment policies have been analysed by environment groups before the state election this weekend and both have lacked the vision and leadership required to confront major issues like climate change and water shortages.

The Greens and Democrats scored strongly, while the major parties’ showing was very poor.

“We are at a time in history where we need leadership to solve very serious environmental issues that will impact on our quality of life the type of world we leave for our children,” Cate Faehrmann, Executive Director of the Nature Conservation Council of NSW said today.

“Morris Iemma and Peter Debnam have failed to show the leadership on issues like climate change, water shortages, land clearing, loss of biodiversity and urban sustainability,” Ms Faehrmann said.

“The recently released State of the Environment Report outlined major environmental challenges facing NSW.  Neither the Labor Party nor the Coalition have showed a coherent vision for turning around problems like severe urban water shortages or achieving sustainable cities,” Jeff Angel, Director of the Total Environment Centre said.

“In the last term of Government Labor demonstrated environmental leadership by banning broadscale land clearing.  That kind of thinking now needs to be applied to stopping illegal clearing and solving other problems like massive loss of biodiversity.  On the other hand the Coalition has vowed to wind-back the ban on land clearing,” Reece Turner, Land Clearing Campaigner for the Wilderness Society said.

“It’s very disappointing that neither the Labor nor Liberal Party have made a promise to reduce greenhouse pollution by 30 per cent by 2020 - the minimum required to prevent the most dangerous impacts of global warming. In fact neither major party has committed to any overall reduction in greenhouse pollution in the next decade.” Mark Wakeham, Energy Campaigner for Greenpeace said.

“Neither major party would commit to protecting high value conservation land from development, sell-offs and logging” Andrew Cox, Executive Officer of National Parks Association of NSW said.

How the parties scored*

*Parties were asked to answer 5 questions in each policy area, and marked out of five for each.

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