CMPA Member Briefing (Issue 35)

Native Vegetation and Mobile Plant Add-Ons

ON Friday 12 October members travelled to William Adams Laverton for a CMPA Briefing focusing on:

• Draft Guidelines for Native Vegetation Management, and
• Mobile Plant Add-Ons

Draft Guidelines for Native Vegetation Management

These Guidelines were recently released for comment and the CMPA was invited to be a member of the Working Party assigned to develop them.

Chris Pitfield, Senior Policy Officer at the Department of Sustainability and Environment attended the CMPA briefing to provide information and background on the issue. Members were given the opportunity to put forward their suggestions regarding this draft document.

CMPA – Introduction to Native Vegetation

The CMPA put forward comments in 2000 to the development of the Native Vegetation Framework with issues including a lack of available information, increased cost and time impacts and difficultly to source offsets. Following this, the CMPA put forward comments in 2005 to the review of the Native Vegetation Exemptions and supported the retention of the exemption and amendments to the exemptions including the environmental signification, vegetation protection, significant landscape, erosion management and salinity management overlays.

The Association’s key concerns regarding native vegetation were outlined in a letter to the Minister in 2005 which included concern as to the independence transparency and accountability of the current regulatory process, how the habitat-hectare is assessed at a particular site, and concern about how the cost of offsets are balanced with the community.

In March 2007 the DSE invited the CMPA to participate in consultation for review of the biodiversity strategy following which the CMPA participated in an interview and a workshop to discuss the issues. A few months later the CMPA were invited to a working group to assist with the development of a discussion paper. Since then Sarah Andrew took Chris Pitfield from the DSE to a number of Members sites.

In summary, this process is not sustainable, there are profound and restrictive costs in assessments and in purchasing offsets. These costs cannot be returned in a reasonable time frame. Entry to the industry is being restricted.

Department of Sustainability & Environment (Chris Pitfield) – Native Vegetation Guidelines for the Earth Resources Industries

Chris Pitfield, Senior Policy Officer, provided information on the following
areas:

• Native Vegetation at a National and State Level
• Drivers and Challenges for Native Vegetation
• Native Vegetation Framework
• What Progress has Been Made?
• Native Vegetation Guidelines for the Earth Resource Industries
• Next Steps

Mobile Plant ‘Add-Ons’

Associate Members JSG Industrial Systems, Caterpillar Institute and Galesafe Weighing updated our Members on the products available to improve the efficiency and safety of mobile plant equipment. Presentations covered what is available and how it addresses specific hazards and inefficiencies.

• JSG Industrial Systems – Cost Benefits of Automatic Lubrication Systems
• JSG Industrial Systems – Fire Suppression
• Caterpillar Institute – Integration between Mobile Plant Licences and the Extractive Industries Training Package
• Galesafe Weighing – Hydraulic Scales on Wheel Loaders

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