Alliance of Western Councils chair Craig Davies has called out the NSW Government for inaction on costly biodiversity laws that are stunting the growth of the Western Plains while throwing money into property next door that he thinks could end in ‘ecological disaster’.

The state biodiversity offset scheme has become one of the biggest threats to local LGA growth, as planned expansions and development is met with a hefty and ‘disproportionate’ extra tax for the cost of environmental harm. 

Mr Davies - along with mayors from across Western NSW - said that conversations with the government to address the issue aren’t going far. 

“I’ve spoken to the Minister for Environment Minister Griffin who has given me some assurances but quite frankly I’m not convinced that they will bear fruit at all,” Mr Davies said. 

“He has a review taskforce that includes four eminent people…but you look at the makeup of that committee and they are four city-based people. Again and again, here we are in rural NSW being dictated to by the city people who don’t understand our issues,” he said. 

Mr Davies said that while the biodiversity payments that are made on developments fail to be returned to the area for local benefit, government investments further west in the name of biodiversity could be an even greater threat. 

In 2021, the NSW Government purchased over 500,000 acres of agricultural land - including  Koonaburra, near Cobar - to turn into a national park with the aim of conserving local species. 

“That in itself is an ecological disaster waiting to happen. If you lock country up out there and it’s no longer grazed, it’s not a matter of if but when lightning strikes that there’s a fire that won’t be put out for years because a lot of that country isn’t accessible,” Mr Davies said. 

“The carbon dioxide released from that fire is going to be far greater than anything they’ve ever saved by (these biodiversity credits),” he said. 

Figures from May 2022 indicate that $90 million has been collected from developers for the Biodiversity Conservation Fund, which holds taxes high enough to have halted a Bourke low-cost housing development in its tracks, after the extra money required for the biodiversity offset rendered it unviable. 

Councils around the Western Plains have found it to be an inhibitor in a time of both opportunity and demand for greater infrastructure and development in the west, with the housing shortage still a critical issue. 

“It’s adding between two and three hundred thousand per residential block in many of our regional cities. So when we’re looking at a housing crisis across country NSW, it is a crisis that is being initiated by the state government,” Mr Davies said. 

No changes have been made to the scheme since it was slammed by the NSW Auditor-General in late August this year.