Little Mt Higginbotham, VIC

With the prospect of the Coalition taking power following yesterday’s state election it is worth taking a few minutes to think about what this might mean in terms of a change in attitude to the Victorian High Country.

The most obvious short term implication would be if the Coalition was actually able to implement its promise to return cattle to the Alpine National Park. (Phil Ingamells of the Victorian National Parks Association recently explained why this is most unlikely).

The Mountain Cattlemen’s Association of Victoria (MCAV) is hoping the Coalition will act on it’s promise to re-introduce cows to the Alpine National Park. They say this would be a good thing because “cattle grazing (is) a proven management tool to reduce fuel loads”.

You don’t have to be a genius to know that a cow, given the choice between a succulent plant and a prickly shrub, will choose to eat the former. Over time, at at scale, this drives sub alpine vegetation towards scrubbier vegetation types – which will be more flammable. ‘Alpine grazing reduces blazing’ has been consistently proven incorrect by a number of studies. There are a range of other reasons to keep cattle out of the headwaters of our most significant river systems, not least of which is water quality. Lets hope common sense will prevail on this one.

They have also announced that they would intensify logging and replace native forest ecosystems with Mountain Ash ‘plantations’.

Another, longer term issue is climate change. As we know, climate science tells us that the Alps are at grave risk from climate change unless we can greatly reduce greenhouse emissions in the near future.

The Victorian Coalition was noticeably absent from the climate change debate through most of this year, and didn’t even bother to release their climate change policy before the election.

They did release an energy policy (just 4 days out from the election) and there are various points of detail in that policy that should worry anyone who is wanting action on climate change from the Party that forms the next state government.

This includes the fact that:

  • they have provided very little detail on how Victoria might meet the existing 20% emissions reduction target,
  • there is no mention of the scale of the problem of climate change,
  • there is no direct commitment to a phase-out of Hazelwood or any other coal fired power station,
  • finally, it includes a regressive policy on wind farms.

As leader, Ted Baillieu has shown a complete lack of interest in the issue of climate change. The next few years are pivotal if the global community is to respond effectively to the threat of global warming. Victoria must do a fair share of this work. Based on their actions over the past year, it seems clear that a Coalition government would send Victoria backwards on this most pressing of issues.

In the build up to the election, environment groups released a series of scorecards assessing Party policies. In the final version, the Greens scored 93%, the ALP was next best on 52% and the Coalition was far behind on just 22%.

The scorecard can be found here.