The Australian Greens have condemned the Rudd Government’s announcement today of national funding for natural resource management under Caring for our Country.

“Minister Garrett claims that the new funding process under Caring for our Country is 'transparent' and 'cuts red tape' – but the more than 1,300 applicants groups have no way of knowing why the vast majority of their projects were not successful and on what basis the 57 funded projects were selected,” the Greens’ Natural Resource Management Spokesperson, Senator Rachel Siewert said.

“Far from reducing red tape, this process has led to thousands of groups putting in hundreds of hours to complete complex business plans with little chance of success.

“The Minister’s claim that this has 'revolutionised' natural resource management (NRM) funding has in fact taken us away from a longer-term strategic planning approach, where regional stakeholders worked together to establish their priorities, to a short-term scatter-gun, individual grants approach where there is no consideration of what has gone before or how individual projects link up to achieve landscape-scale goals.

“Of the $404 million in funding, $57.5 million was dedicated to individual projects – of this, $19 million going to the camel eradication project, leaving just $38.5 million spread across 56 projects. These are the ‘winners’ from a total 1,300 applications, who together sought a total $3.4 billion.

“The amount allocated is less than half of the $122 million that was promised for project funding by the Minister’s Department recently in Senate Estimates – who also neglected to point out to the Senate Environment committee that this figure included funding quarantined for the Great Barrier Reef.

“West Australian NRM projects have been largely overlooked in the current funding round, with a total of $60 million out of $404 million – equivalent to 14.8 per cent of funds to cover one-third of Australia's land mass.

“I am disappointed that the biggest biodiversity threat to biodiversity across southern WA has been overlooked with no funding set aside to tackle the alarming spread of Phytophthora dieback.”

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