Page 1011 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 19 March 1991
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In regard to permits for the droving of stock, the Stock Act 1934 requires a landholder to obtain a permit from a person authorised to issue stock permits. The intention of the permit is to make stock theft difficult. There are, however, relatively few people authorised to issue permits, and often a permit is required at short notice. This means that landholders who wish to drove their own stock suffer unnecessary delays.
In New South Wales, for example, landholders and stockholders may write a permit for the movement of their own stock, provided they periodically forward a return of permits issued to an appropriate authority. The proposed legislation for the ACT provides for the same arrangement, with the appropriate authority being the controller of stock within the Parks and Conservation Bureau of the Department of the Environment, Land and Planning. This initiative will ensure that landholders who wish to move their own stock will not experience unnecessary delays waiting for a permit to be issued elsewhere.
Let me now focus on stock routes as they apply in the ACT. Those of us from the country are fully aware of the use of stock routes and travelling stock reserves, which are prevalent throughout the country. They have been used for droving stock over great distances in the vast expanses of pastoral Australia. Much Australian folklore has developed over these great areas of terrain, and we can read of the great exploits of people such as Captain Starlight and others, back in the early days of Australia.
Henry Lawson spent some time "on the wallaby", as they say, moving along these tracks in western New South Wales. In times past they have been used for grazing - the long paddock - especially during droughts. Those of us who are familiar with A.B. "Banjo" Paterson will know that he wrote a number of poems about the long paddocks and their use by stockmen, as opposed to the pastoralists, who sought to stop the stockmen from grazing stock in their area and moved them on.
Stock reserves exist in the ACT under the provisions of the Stock Act 1934. The current need for stock routes and reserves was closely assessed in reviewing the Act, and it was decided that provision for stock routes and reserves was no longer appropriate in the ACT. The droving of sheep or cattle is incompatible with the age of modern highways and fast vehicles, although those of us who have travelled recently in western New South Wales are aware that it does go on in that part of the country. In the ACT, where rural land is close to the city, stock routes have in a lot of cases been incorporated into residential development.
I should emphasise that this action does not preclude emergency accommodation of travelling stock or drought grazing; nor does it preclude the movement of stock in the ACT. Areas of unleased rural land could readily be made available for holding stock in an emergency.
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