Dr Steve Douglas from Western Sydney University's Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment has a message for Growing Illawarra Natives readers: please sign this petition asking the Federal Minister for the Environment to intervene to prevent the sale of invasive plants, because State and Territory controls are too often inadequate.
That's the short version! If you'd like to understand why this petition is important, read on! It's a long read, and somewhat technical, but I promise you you'll learn a lot, and it's very motivating.
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| Arum Lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica) is spreading rapidly across the Illawarra region, choking waterways and excluding native vegetation. |
In NSW, invasive plants are regulated under the Biosecurity Act, which also deals with invasive fauna and pathogens. That Act replaced the Noxious Weeds Act but has wider scope. Many of us still refer to officially recognised weeds as ‘noxious’ but that term no longer has any statutory meaning. Under the Biosecurity Act, statutory plans or strategies determine how invasive plants are classified ,and this is done at the State, Regional and Local Government levels. The Act specifies how plants are assessed, and it priorities new and emerging weeds because this is seen as much more cost-effective than focusing on well-established weeds. It is certainly wise to target new and emerging weeds because your capital and labour is more likely to have a greater benefit per unit than it would when spent on a well-established weed. ‘Get in early’ is essentially the strategy, but the Act tends to give up on trying to suppress, let alone eradicate species that it deems to be common and widespread.
In the Illawarra, the NSW Biosecurity Strategy and the South East Regional Strategic Weed Management Plan apply. Unlike some Local Government Areas that have their own local weed plan, the Illawarra District has one that incorporates the LGAs of Wollongong, Shellharbour and Kiama. The local plan recognises Local Priority Weeds that may not be prioritised at the regional or State scale. It is informed in part by the Illawarra Biodiversity Strategy. At this scale, assessments of weed status are undertaken by the Illawarra District Weeds Authority. This scale of operation is like the old ‘County Councils’ that operated under the Noxious Weeds Act and that often included 2 or more LGAs in recognition that weeds do not respect LGA boundaries, so it is important to assess and management them accordingly. One example of where this falls over is the boundary between the ACT and NSW, which do not share legislation or government, meaning a species can be declared a priority weed on one side of this very artificial boundary, but not on the other.
Some key differences between the old Noxious Weeds Act and the Biosecurity Act are that the latter includes a ‘general biosecurity duty’ that means everyone must take reasonable steps to not cause a biosecurity threat to other parties. In theory, this could mean that if there is an invasive species in your neighbourhood that is generating a lot of seedlings into other yards, those affected could ask the owner of that plant or plants to control it so it can’t seed (e.g. prune it after flowering) or to remove it if control isn’t possible. It would not have to be a listed weed under a weed strategy. The fact that it is invasive should be enough to use the general biosecurity duty requirement. Some people might comply with such a request, but some won’t unless legal action is taken and succeeds, whether taken by those affected or by the local authority (mostly a Council or a District Weeds Authority). The other key difference between the Acts is that the Biosecurity Act “binds the Crown”, which means all NSW Government agencies must comply with it. This wasn’t the case under the Noxious Weeds Act.
So on the face of it, the Biosecurity Act looks like a major improvement over the old Act, and in some ways it is, but the test is ‘where the rubber meets the road’ and too often, that’s where it fails. Decisions about how weeds are classified at various scales are not limited to science and ethics but are instead subject to economic and sectional interests. In addition, the assessment method that is prescribed by the Act does not give adequate weight to biodiversity values, and it does not require the consideration of relevant material such as Threat Abatement Plans, Saving Our Species Plans, threatened biodiversity profiles that list biosecurity-related threats, or numerous other government-produced sources of information that are clearly relevant. The process is too insular and gives too much consideration to the politics and economics of potential weed control requirements. Those considerations are not at all overt. In addition, the decision-making process is not subject to formal peer review, though the State and Regional Strategies are exhibited for public comment. Like too many other documents that are exhibited for comment, there’s no practical requirement for the decision-maker to heed those comments, no matter how authoritative, and there is no right of appeal.
Weed control can be expensive, and as a result, organisations with delegated authority under the Act arguably have a conflict of interest when assessing the status of weeds. For example, if an authority uses the prescribed assessment method in a way that does not consider many species that are otherwise recognised as weeds in that area, they can potentially avoid large costs associated with controlling those species on their lands. The conflict of interest is surprisingly simple: a control authority that is also a land manager should not be able to determine its own weed strategy (primarily at the local or district scale) because there is an economic incentive for it to not prioritise species that are known to occur on its own lands. Instead, the assessment process should be undertaken independent of land managers (mostly Councils or groups of them) to avoid that conflict of interest. Key Council staff should certainly be involved in the process because they often have good knowledge of which weeds grow where and how they’re affecting different assets such as biodiversity values, stormwater drains, natural waterways, wetlands, bushland, and even bushfire risk. But such staff and their managers should not have the final say when making a local or district strategy. Some employ external advisers to inform the making of their strategy, which may be useful if the adviser has relevant local knowledge, but this does not resolve the conflict of interest.
The South East Regional Strategic Weed Management Plan (2023-2027) controversially excluded Blackberry (primarily Rubus anglocandicans but extending to related exotic species) from the list of Priority Weeds. The prescribed assessment method considers Blackberry to be too common and widespread to be a priority weed, and as such, deems it unfair to mandate control of this species because it is considered impossible to control it effectively across the Region. The notion is that if the Act and Plan required control of this species, you could see a situation where a land owner who was ordered to control it by the relevant authority could object unless all nearby land owners were subject to the same requirement. This notion reveals the economic driver underneath some aspects of the weed assessment method. If Blackberry had been subject to mandatory control, some land owners could be forced to spend a lot of money to control it themselves or to pay contractors. But equally, government land owner/managers would be similarly affected. This includes agencies responsible for Crown lands, State Forests, Transport for NSW, and local Councils. Whilst Blackberry is common and widespread in parts of the South East Region, and control costs for some land owner/managers would be substantial and on-going to varying degrees, this doesn’t justify it being excluded from the list of mandatory control species. It would justify it not being classified as a Priority Weed because it is already common and widespread, much like Lantana is in the coastal zone. But the decision-making process now means that control authorities cannot order a land owner to control Blackberry. They can ask, and they can point out the General Biosecurity Duty, but legal precedent indicates that this Duty is unlikely to be enforceable because of how it is defined in the Act. It is more of a nice idea than an enforceable mechanism. If a land owner wanted to claim that they are complying with that Duty, they may only have to show that they are doing something to stop the spread of blackberry, e.g. slashing or spraying around an existing infestation. They could claim that this is their attempt at complying with the Duty, and that may be deemed sufficient action, even though it fails to deal with the reality that Blackberry can be spread over substantial distances by various animal vectors. The General Biosecurity Duty needs to be better defined so that it can be enforced. If it were genuinely and realistically enforceable, then it wouldn’t matter so much that Blackberry is not a Priority Weed, because the Duty could still be used to require effective control in situations where this might be warranted e.g. next to conservation estate or another significant biodiversity asset. It should also be readily enforceable by non-authority entities such as individuals or businesses or community groups who can make a case that control is necessary because of harms arising from this species. For example, a Bushcare or Landcare group should be able to ask the local control authority to require a nearby land owner with an infestation to effectively control it (attempt to eradicate it, acknowledging that this may take some time and reinfestation from other populations may continue). That authority should assess the case and be able to require control even though the species is not a Priority Weed. If the authority does not take that action, the group should be able to go to the Local Court and ask the Registrar to assess their case and make a control order.
In part because of the various failings of the Act, particularly that it fails to consider the full scope of weeds known or likely to be relevant to various areas at which Strategies are made, many weeds continue to be grown and sold. Control authorities are not resourced or incentivised to deal with the full scope of invasive plants, and none deal with the problem of invasive native species except where these are considered a form of regrowth that threatens agriculture (pastoralism). The problem of invasive plants is not limited to those that have been introduced from outside Australia, but includes Australian native species planted outside their range. This means that even a well-intentioned person who opts to only buy ‘native plants’ can unwittingly become part of the problem if they plant Acacia saligna or Sollya heterophylla from Western Australia in an East Coast area where both can be highly invasive. Even within the eastern States, there’s Schefflera actinophylla (Umbrella Tree) and Corymbia torreliana (Cadaghi) from north Queensland that are weeds in NSW and even in South East QLD. The latter examples show that species can be problematic within different parts of the same State. Keep in mind that some Australian States and the Northern Territory are larger than one or more European nations, and span multiple bioregions, so it isn’t that surprising that you can’t be safe just by choosing to only grow plants from your State or Territory. Examples from NSW include Nephrolepis cordifolia (Fishbone Fern), Acacia baileyana (John Williamson’s beloved Cootamundra Wattle – it’s his friend but in the ACT they call it Cootamongrel Wattle because it is highly invasive and hard to eradicate), Eucalyptus microcorys (Tallowwood) and Grevillea robusta (Silky Oak).
Plant nurseries at wholesale and retail levels are bound by the Act and its Strategies, and there is some compliance monitoring that even extends to local market days where some stall holders sell or otherwise trade plants. But there is nowhere near enough compliance monitoring, and realistically, enforcement is limited to Priority Weeds, and those lists are far too small to encompass the scope of so-called ‘environmental weeds’ even when at least some of those species are recognised in other government literature as being serious threats to biodiversity values, e.g. all three Ligustrum (privet) species. The situation is so poor that you could find your local nursery selling well-known weeds such as Privets, and you can report this to your local weed authority, only to be told that “there’s nothing we can do about it, but if we have time, we will speak to the manager and ask them not to sell it”. Again, if the lists of declared weeds were more ecologically informed, this situation wouldn’t arise, and if the General Biosecurity Duty was properly defined, an authority could order the nursery to not only stop selling the Privet but to destroy all stock and to disclose where they bought it from if it came from a wholesaler.
The current regulatory scheme does next to nothing to tackle the problem of what it might dismiss as ‘environmental weeds’. States and Territories, let alone local Councils, have a conflicted interest in this context, whereas Commonwealth law could be much more effective because it isn’t limited to State and Territory borders, can best deal with the importation of species, and the Commonwealth Government is not a major land owner with direct land management responsibilities. New Commonwealth biosecurity law could adopt the approach used in Western Australia where instead of trying to keep up with a large and growing list of weeds that need to be assessed and controlled using a ‘prohibited list’, it could provide a ‘permitted list’ of species that have been assessed as non-invasive. To be effective, this needs to be applied at various scales.
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| Mickey Mouse Plant (Ochna serrulata), one of many problematic environmental weeds in the Illawarra region. |
We need legislation and resources to operate it that will take the burden of decision-making off individuals who are often not well-positioned to know which species are safe to plant and where. We needs all sellers of plants to be bound by law that is precautionary and ecologically informed such that they cannot sell known weeds – only species on what would be a large ‘permitted list’. This would mean that a lot of what are now commonly grown and planted species would no longer be available. You only have to watch Gardening Australia to see how many times a presenter mentions a garden plant, often favourably, but at the bottom of the screen there’s a warning to the effect that “this may be an environmental weed in your area”. You can even see that the more ecologically informed presenters run stories in which they mention invasive species as things not to plant, or describe how they prevent plantings from being a problem (e.g. removing seeds or using physical containment), yet the less ecologically informed presenters (Jane!) all too often praise invasive species as though somehow the aesthetics of these plants are more important than the harm that they cause in some contexts. Not good enough! That program, which is of course funded by tax revenue, should set the highest standard of gardening ethics by not promoting in any way, species that are invasive in any part of Australia. It is not as though we are short of other gardening options.
Upshot: Please support the Invasive Species Council’s petition to the Commonwealth Minister for the Environmen, and if you have the energy, organise a petition to State and local governments asking for better law, policy and resourcing to deal with environmental weeds and their sale and distribution.
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