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As the likelihood of legislation to limit clearing of native vegetation gained public notoriety in the late 1990s, and pre-emptory clearing accelerated, concern by rural landholders in particular about ‘property rights’ intensified. Heated meetings were held around the State. The Department of Natural Resources  commissioned two significant consultancies and its own officers produced a significant internal report. These analyses lead to a government decision not to pay ‘compensation’ for newly imposed restrictions (which were of a regulatory and not proprietorial nature), but instead to establish funds for industry adjustment, property management planning and purchase of distressed enterprises.

Institutional Reform in Rural Australia: Defining and Allocating Property Rights, Tony Gleeson and Kirstie Piper, 2002.

Property Rights and Natural Resource Management, Ian Reeve, Institute of Rural Futures, 2002.

The Department’s internal paper was titled as if confined to property in water, but that was an artifact of late-stage internal negotiations; the analysis applies also to land.

In 2002 the Department commissioned eminent planner and lawyer Phil Day to produce an Issues Paper examining the concept of betterment – the taxing of the unlearned increment in value when government decisions and the general advance of a community result in a rising value of land. The paper – Incentives and Disincentives – the Potential of Property Taxes to Reinforce Public Policy Objectives wasn’t published but a copy has fallen from the back of a truck into QSN’s hands.

Maps of land use and land tenure in South-east Queensland:

Public land map – April 2008.
Map plus table.
Land use summary for the SEQ NRM region – June 2014.

In 2014 the Queensland Government published a Discussion Paper envisaging freeholding some of the public land estate. The Queensland Outdoor Recreation Federation (now Outdoors Queensland) commissioned a report titled Underpinning the Foundations of the Four Pillars. Queensland State Land–. A copy of the State’s Discussion Paper Strengthening our economic future has been annotated with detailed comments by QORF’s consultant.

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At the time of drafting this post (April 2025), there seems to be no end of distressing news about loss of scientific knowledge, disbandment of scientific institutions and abandonment of knowledge-generating projects. So QSN has decided to open a page to accommodate some benchmark writings on the subject.

Two landmark documents in this field were published in the Proceedings of The Royal Society of Queensland in volume 124 of 2020:

Creating and then abolishing bodies of scientific knowledge, expertise and analytical capability: An Australian political malaise, by the late David Marlow, a member of the Royal Society of Queensland at the time.

Processes and institutions for scientific independence – Reflections on Land & Water Australia, by Jason Alexandra, highlighting the appalling decision to destroy one of the few national bodies aiming to reach across disciplinary boundaries to produce integrated analysis.

Society member Dr Geoff Edwards has written a few articles on the importance of knowledge in the series of opinion pieces Prevention or Patch-up? as contributions to a project by the Royal Societies of Australia on preventative health. Look especially for the first article on 28 February 2024; and the article “Prevention or patch-up? Data, information, and knowledge are not ‘wisdom’”on 8 May 2024; and on 1 May 2025 a critique of the political platform that would see large numbers cut from the Australian Public Service.

An opinion piece was published in the Times Higher Education on 24 April by Rhodri Davies and Dorrit Jacob:
“Earth science is critical to national resilience – so why is it being gutted? Australia must fund its universities in ways that reflect their mission – not just their margins”.

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Dr Felicity Cutten is a scientist and freelance writer who has published popular science, short stories, poetry and short fiction. She has a PhD from McGill University, Montreal, Canada and was Assistant Professor of Entomology at its agricultural college for seven years. This was followed by thirty years of teaching senior biology and general science in New Zealand. She worked for six years as field assistant with geologists mapping landforms in outback Western Australia. She has also developed an olive orchard. She has a life-long interest in the natural sciences, ecology and the effects of human activities on the natural world.

In late 2024 she visited Norfolk Island and recorded her observations in this charming report – part natural history, part travelogue, part commentary on local affairs.

(Norfolk Island is administered by the Commonwealth of Australia. Health and education services are provided by the Queensland Government under contract to the Commonwealth. It is deemed by The Royal Society of Queensland to lie within Queensland for the purpose of publishing scientific articles).

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