Government resources

Although the primary purpose of this website is to showcase the activities of Queensland’s non-government scientific societies, a page has been reserved for links to sites and resources of the Queensland and national governments.

Queensland Government

The Queensland Government has an “open access” policy which means that in principle, all non-confidential material is available to the public free or for the cost only of reproduction. Finding material however is not always easy. The Government’s “Current Publications Search Engine” is a central point of access for gazettes, scientific and annual reports, current departmental strategies and other statutory and official reports.

Also see the Library catalogue of the Department of Science, Environment etc. Among many other resources, this catalogue indexes scientific papers published by officers of the public service in their professional capacities. Also, the Department of Environment and Science site accesses a wide range of resources, including:

• the Queensland Science Capability Directory which indexes the State’s research centres, institutes, facilities, research hospitals, precincts, laboratories and other research organisations.

The Office of the Queensland Chief Scientist is an entity of the Department. It offers:

• Past editions of the Newsletter of the Office of the Queensland Chief Scientist
• Publications
• Educational resources.

WildNet and other wildlife sources

The WildNet Program within the Department of Environment and Science acquires and manages a range of information relating to Queensland’s wildlife. Information from the WildNet database approved for release is made available via the following internet applications:

• Species lists, 
• Species profile search
• Biomaps
• Environmental reports online
• Queensland Government Open Data Portal
• Queensland Spatial Catalogue
• Queensland Globe

Metadata from relevant articles from the Proceedings of The Royal Society of Queensland have been incorporated within the WildNet database with links to the associated species and reserves. Information about other sources of Queensland wildlife information can be accessed via Useful wildlife resources.

Resource Planning Guidelines – Natural resource management
From c.1995-2006 the Department of Natural Resources published a series of Resource Planning Guidelines that are no longer readily accessible . Some of these documents have enduring value, though legislation and policy has in many cases changed substantially since then. These papers are copyright to the Queensland Government. The Australian Web Archive has captured the set of published guidelines as they stood at August 2004: Resource Planning Guidelines in Trove.

Some titles are re-presented here:

C5-Translating NRM Planning Between the Regional and Property Scales, 2004. Conceptualises the procedures for land-use planning.

E3 Strategic Data Capture Plan, a list of the data sets required to form prudent decisions about the use of land and natural resources, with explanations.

E51 Benefit/Cost of Land Resource Assessment: The Leichhardt Downs (Burdekin) Study, an economic analysis of the value of coordinated land resource assessment, demonstrating a benefit cost ratio of more than 50 to 1, primarily on account of avoided errors.

G100 Implementing Natural Resource Management Plans: Ensuring that something happens. 2004. Explains property rights, tools for achieving conservation and NRM, constituting a coordinating body. A good read for members and staff of NRM and landcare groups.

E31 Assessing, Evaluating and Protecting Land as Open Space, 1999.

Evaluating the best use of State land

Departmental officer David Marlow wrote an internal departmental guideline on land use planning in 1996. His paper explains the very distinctive mindset and criteria that need to be brought to evaluating the attributes of public land with a view to alienating (selling) them from the public estate or changing to some other public purpose. The process is very different from that adopted by urban and regional planners operating within the statutory development control regime. The State land planner is assessing whether property rights should be granted from the Crown and in what form; the statutory planner (most commonly employed by local government or consulting to applicants) is assessing whether property rights already enjoyed by the landholder should be intensified.

Australian Government

A “lost classic” is the CRC for Greenhouse Accounting archive at National Library of Australia.