by Kate Holden
‘The state environment department reported just over 1000 submissions’: Breakdown of submissions in ‘Biodiversity Legislation Review’, December 2014 and Hunjan.
“The take away message …”: Vergotis.
“We believe many farmers …”: Quoted in Druce, 18 July 2017.
‘… underestimating clearing by six-fold’: Hannam, 4 August 2016.
‘The Gwydir Wetlands …’: Hannam, 6 August 2016.
“threaten the most significant remnants …”: Chris Nadolny, Mark Speakman, Penny Sharpe and Mehreen Faruqi quoted in Hannam, 17 November 2016. Clearing permissions could be granted even on Crown lease land.
“If we all did a little bit …”: Anderson.
“… very little is known about Mr Turnbull’s personal life”: Lee.
“He’s always been a mudguard”: Quoted in Cornwall.
“We will never have closure …’: Quoted in Chillingworth, 2017.
“It didn’t sit well with me”: R v Turnbull (No. 26), 2016.
‘Ian Robert Turnbull, Late of “Yambin”, Moree’: Moree Champion, 11 April 2017.
Chapter 20
“Dear Premier and Minister for the Environment …”: McKenzie, 2017.
“Glen Turner was a highly valued and experienced environment officer”: Quoted in Hannam, 17 August 2017.
“You can’t help thinking …”: Spark, 2017.
“From what we have heard …’: McKenzie, 2017.
‘The office was pained …’: In 2011, the science division, representing the mapping staff, secured $4.5 million over four years without the knowledge of other OEH divisions. A report was commissioned from an outside source but cancelled before it could be delivered. The author, Nicole Campbell, was instructed to hand over all electronic files but apparently circulated a handful of hard copies to senior OEH executives. When the Greens submitted a freedom of information request the next year, the OEH was unable to find a copy (see Hannam, 15 January 2016).
“It’s very, very big …”: Spark, 2017.
‘Turnbull had no prior record …’: Olding, 5 August 2014.
“a great injustice”, “Ian Turnbull would not hurt a fly …”, “This is all on record”: Slater, July 2020.
‘A person, unknown to Robert Strange …’: Chris Nadolny, asked whether he could imagine Turner having trespassed that evening, says, ‘It doesn’t sound right to me. I’ve been with Glen on a number of occasions. He wouldn’t have crossed the fence. He’d have known he’d get into trouble for doing that, so he’d have been on the right side of the barbed-wire fence’ (see Nadolny, 19 August 2019). Robert Strange always denied they trespassed, and his photographs were taken from the established points on the public reserve to the side of Talga Road.
“… if this employee …”: Slater, 2016.
“a rogue employee …”: Slater, 2018.
“From their point of view …’: Slater, July 2020.
“It is hoped …”: Spark, ‘Submission Requesting a Coronial Investigation’.
‘[S]ome accountability is required …”: Slater, 2016.
“If government continues to restrict …”: Quoted in Druce, 18 July 2017. There is a legal term, solatium, which describes payment in compensation for an injury to the feelings, rather than a physical or financial harm. That is how the term, from the Latin solace, is understood in Scots and American law. In Australia its concern is, tellingly, very financial and physical – usually applied to payment in return for compulsory government acquisition of property. It is not generally used in land management restrictions, but the implication that the government has appropriated something and someone should have to pay remains in the reactions and rhetoric of landholder lobby groups.
‘Part of the package …’: ‘Saving Our Species Program.’ The provisions come in three tiers. A biodiversity stewardship agreement encourages the permanent sequestering of private land, known as ‘covenanting’. Conservation agreements are a less binding form in which an owner might pledge to conserve land with special features such as native habitat or Aboriginal heritage sites after they sell or die. They can also be used to convert perpetual Crown leases into freehold, and entitle the owners to government assistance with maintenance, and land rate and tax breaks. Wildlife refuge agreements support more general conservation work on farming properties. All tiers are administered by the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust.
‘Meanwhile, only critically endangered species …’: Nadolny, ‘The New Biodiversity Laws’.
‘Paddock trees shelter …’: Main.
‘Ecologists propose protecting them …’: Manning, p. 317.
‘Phil Spark has seen several extinctions …’: Phil Spark quoted in Spark, 2017.
‘Now they too were open for clearing …’ In October 2020, the New South Wales cabinet agreed to change regulations, allowing property owners to clear up to 25 metres from a fenceline without environmental approval, not for development but under the Rural Fires Act 1997 No. 65, with the rationale of protection against bushfire risk. Such allowances had not been included in any of the recommendations of the New South Wales bushfire inquiry.
“Solastalgia”: Quotations from Glenn Albrecht in Albrecht et al. It is a corollary of another instinct: spirituality, Godhead, paganism, animism; E.O. Wilson’s biophilia, or ‘love of place’; geographer Yi-Fu Tuan’s topophilia, or love of country. These are complicated, portmanteau words, from other times and the other side of the world, but perhaps they are appropriate here in Australia, to name the effect of awkward importation of ourselves.
‘… a 1992 CSIRO report …’: Barnes & Hill, 1992.
“a young generation who don’t give a stuff …”: Anderson.
‘“Native bears” (koalas) and “tiger cats” (quolls)’: Blomfield.
‘… a joint report by the RSPCA and the WWF …’: Taylor et al., 2017.
“Nothing else in Queensland …”: Symons.
‘… one out of three mammal extinctions …’: Figure quoted in Morton, 28 October 2019.
‘What is described as the Sixth Extinction …’: Taylor et al., 2017. The United Nations released a report in May 2019 by its Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. It described stunning trajectories of diminishment and extinction, and indicated the possibility of massive insect population loss, jeopardising food systems, as well as an 82 per cent fall in the biomass of wild mammals.
“to actually wipe out all the wildlife …”: Quoted in Anderson.
“assess impacts on biodiversity values”: ‘Biodiversity Assessment Method’.
‘The Environmental Defenders Office describes BAM …’: ‘NSW Biodiversity Reforms 2016: Issue 2 – Offsets and Ecologically Sustainable Development’.
“Biodiversity offsetting, by definition …”: Quoted in Slezak, 15 November 2016.
“inherently unusable”: Discussion of vegetation map flaws, promised improvements and John Hunter quoted in Hannam, 15 January 2016.
“the government will not make any decision …”: Quoted in Druce, 18 July 2017.
“The farmers … were actually saying …”: Spark, 2017.
‘The association, on a roll, passed other motions’: Clarry & Noon.
“We’re in a dark spot …”: Nadolny, 18 February 2018.
“will certainly make it easier for landholders …”: Nadolny, ‘The New Biodiversity Laws’, p. 9. The article also recounts the experience at the University of New England.
‘… the government gave it out to The Guardian’: Davies, 2018.
‘… in relation to activity just across the border’: Slezak, 12 March 2018.
Chapter 21
‘Ian, Robeena and the four sons …’: Details of ‘Yambin’ road access; feud between Ian, Roger, Grant and Robeena; Grant’s testimony and the judge’s summation in Turnbull v Turnbull, 2017.
“Any attempts by Roger Turnbull, Annette Turnbull or their employees …”: Quoted in Turnbull v Turnbull, 2017, paragraph 21.
‘The very next day it was remade, and it carried on’: Three months later, in June 2018, the Nature Conservation Council of NSW and the Environmental Defenders Office tried again, hazarding that the code’s lack of reference to the ecologically sustainable development principles made it unlawful. This time, the allegation was that Upton had not, in the brief hours before the code was reinstated in March, had time to ‘properly, genuinely, and realistically’ contemplate the implications of her assent, and the ecologically sustainable development principles still weren’t discernible. ‘The role of the Environment Minister outlined in the law is not one of rubber stamping, nor one of symbolism,’ said David Morris, the chief executive officer of the Environmental Defenders Office. ‘It is the crucial check and balance to ensure the integrity of our state’s unique biodiversity in a changing climate.’ See Dobney, 2018.
‘After the encounter with Turnbull, he kept mostly to his house …’: The impacts of Glen Turner’s murder on Robert Strange in Holden, ‘Notes from Victim Impact Statements’.
“Expecting someone to come through the door with a gun …”: Quoted in Piatek.
‘On a personal level I have become a recluse’: Quoted in Holden, ‘Notes from Victim Impact Statements’.
“It’s amazing … what something can do to your brain”: Quoted in Piatek.
‘During the ordeal … my focus was on Mr Turner’: Strange v Turnbull, paragraph 12.
‘A settlement agreement was finally reached in October 2018’: Strange, 2020.
Chapter 22
“slow violence”: Quoted in Nixon.
‘grazier and passionate conservationist’: This description appears in Robin, 1994, p. 38.
“Droughts and soil erosion …”, “The original greenie”: Dewar Wilson Goode and his son quoted in Wetherell, p. 24.
‘As Massy explains …’: The growth of an organic mindset in Massy, p. 50. Ironically, as he points out, it was those old Commonwealth ties to Britain, even in the 1950s, that gave experimental farmers here access to British research and publishing. A group of ‘organic’ farmers formed in Sydney in 1944, after receiving The Living Soil by Lady Eve Balfour and hearing her speak. Soil was a subject for enthusiasm over in the next ten or so years, with several works on its properties and significance.
“The key difference between industrial and regenerative agriculture …”: Massy, p. 161. George Main takes issue with the term ‘sustainable agriculture’, seeing it as a furphy for the sustainability of industrial farming, not the broader, more holistic term disingenuously implied. Massy, too, exposes some double-talk in the claims made for direct-drilling. In ‘diabolically clever reframing’, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and others like Australia’s CSIRO rebranded direct drilling (also known as ‘zero tilling’) as the cosy ‘conservation agriculture’, although there are hazards for this too. Both ‘conservation agriculture’, or cropping, and ‘sustainable agriculture’ aim for healthful soil, but come at solutions with different compromises: benefits to soil structure are usually at the price of intense chemical additives and the destruction of life within it (see Main). Turnbull practised ‘minimum-’ or ‘zero-till’ techniques, also using traditions of burning stubble, minimal ploughing and fallow, but herbicides too, which have implications for human health, soil health and plant health.
‘Leaves and grass blades are all solar panels …’: Massy, p. 67.
‘Massy’s book is full of examples of permutations …’: The keyline system, p. 128, and pasture cropping, pp. 194–97, in Massy. Quotation from Colin Seis on p. 201. Interestingly, it was a Zimbabwean farmer, Allan Savory, who popularised the idea of what he called ‘holistic planned grazing’ or ‘cell grazing’. The concept was brought to Australia by a disciple in 1989, and Massy considers it ‘one of the greatest forward leaps in agriculture since domestication 10,000 years ago’. Savory was inspired by the wild herds of migratory animals in Africa and the after-effects of their presence on land: not devastation, but regeneration. Rather than let stock roam over wide areas, eating each out and then requiring bought grain, graziers put massed stock in small fenced areas, allowing dung to fall and grass to be picked, then moved them on in coordinated rotations while each area was allowed to rest and absorb the stimulation of forage and manure. It is a demanding, but not arduous, system in which natural functions are allowed to do their work (see Massy).
“If we don’t go to regenerative agriculture …”: Quoted in Chan, 22 October 2018.
‘… perhaps just 15 per cent more carbon …’: Schwartz.
“a ready, effective and proven means …”: Massy, p. 442.
‘The Liberal Party launched the report …’: Martin, 2019.
“a painful history of suppression, fragmentation and disorder”: Main, p. 225.
“Whenever we are fighting for the least of these animals …”: Anderson.
‘Native grasses … grow themselves’: Bruce Pascoe is quoted in Chan, 6 October 2018. STIPA Native Grasses Association Inc., named for the generic term for corkscrew or speargrass, is an association formed to promote native grass as pasture and an instrument of conservation. They document what exists and run courses and restoration projects – for example, in the box woodlands of New South Wales – in conjunction with farmers and community groups. They published Darryl Cluff’s Farming Without Farming, and they have government funding for a trial in carbon sequestration using planned grazing and pasture cropping.
“What is it that makes a landscape?”: Massy, p. 351.
“monoculture of the mind”: Vandana Shiva.
“The crucial point …”: Massy, p. 411.
“After what we have seen this year …”: Quoted in Kinbacher.
“Oh, the moisture in that paddock!”: Anderson.
“I believe that love is the essential ingredient …”: Massy, p. 499. Knepp, a radical regenerative project in Sussex, England, has also dared leave nature to reestablish its own equilibrium, albeit with initial management. The owners of the estate, Isabella Tree and Charles Burrell, allowed vegetation to freely reestablish, then introduced large herbivores to graze and manure. Species are reappearing that haven’t been seen in hundreds of years; ecological texts are being rewritten. Tree explains in her bestseller Wilding (2018) that the seedbed for re-emergent vegetation has been hosted in the hedgerows that border old fields. Fenceline vegetation in Australia might work the same way. But those frail lines of refuge are being cleared. Tree and Burrell find it essential to keep a certain percentage ‘open’ by strategic reintroduction of herbivores, and have had qualms about the vulnerability of reemergent species; surrounded by mainstream practices, fire risk, invasive pests and diffuse climate change, their work is an experiment, still inconclusive.
‘The farmer would have to pay …’: The judge made an interesting diversion into the subject of Grant’s finances in light of Grant’s claim that he’d be financially ruined by a big fine. ‘Colorado’ was owned by his trust, but Grant had owned the property on the title, though the judge couldn’t work out who owned it now. Grant had sold ‘Buckie’ in 2015, with a capital gain, according to his tax return (the clerks of the court had done their work), of more than a million dollars – but Qanagco now seemed to own ‘Buckie’. Qanagco appeared to pay some of the environmental regulation costs on ‘Colorado’, and it had paid four million dollars in dividends to Grant himself over two years. ‘These financial statements,’ said Justice Preston, ‘are unsatisfactory in in many respects’ (see Chief Executive v Grant Wesley Turnbull, 2017, pp. 62–63).
‘… what the Turnbull family had done on “Strathdoon” and “Colorado” …’ Judge’s statements, details of charges and arguments, and witness testimony for Grant and Cory in ibid. An old friend of Cory’s, who went to boarding school with him in Toowoomba, told the court that Cory had always had a passion for farming – and wildlife. He ‘is one of the most responsible, driven and
next-generation farmers that agriculture in Australia will need and will be proud to have. He is leading the way in minimal-till farming, reduced chemical usage and environmentally friendly practices.’
“at the end of the day …”: ibid., p. 60.
“statements of regret …”: ibid., p. 71.
“The community must be satisfied …”: ibid., p. 72.
“The wild … is not the opposite of the cultivated”: Quoted in Griffiths, Jay, p. 37.
Chapter 23
“And then you’ve got Dad …”: Quoted in Cornwall.
“If it was going to require more than one grave …”: Nadolny, 18 February 2018. Roger had allegedly told a senior OEH official to warn Nadolny to stay away from Grant after Turner’s death. Following newly cautious protocol, Nadolny and his legal team at the agency had requested an armed marshal at one of his expert testimonies in the Land and Environment Court. ‘Which turned out to be overkill,’ he remembers in his slight voice, ‘because Grant Turnbull never showed up anyway.’ Previously Grant, indeed, had come up to him at an airport after a court appearance and apologised for the legal team’s aggression. ‘Grant has never expressed anger towards me,’ Nadolny says. But his father certainly had.
‘… the memory of a conversation …’: Nadolny’s recall of Turnbull’s comments to him and Turner in Nadolny, 31 October 2019.
“a very foggy memory”: ibid. Nadolny expected that his statement to police would be followed by an interview. A year or so later he realised it wouldn’t, so he sent in a second, more detailed statement. During the trial, the prosecution felt that such a scandalous, late piece of evidence might only compromise what seemed a clear-cut case. In the witness box, Nadolny wasn’t asked about the whole conversation.
“This has affected me”: Nadolny, 19 August 2019.
“I would never … see a white man hanged for killing a black”: Korff.