Lesson learning from the pyrogenic age remains unresolved from almost any perspective. The Indigenous management of the landscape through fire may have been continued by the European population for some time into the nineteenth century until the skill and experience of using fire gradually contracted with the corresponding diminution of the rural population in the early twentieth century. This needs further examination but it has much explanatory power when also
considering the attitudes towards, and practice of, fire management today. These are influenced by largely urban and ―lifestyle‖ rural populations that have a
fundamental view that bushfires are destructive.
Another perspective from which there are unresolved questions partly forced by the above, concerns the type of landscape we require and the fire management needed to implement it and maintain it. Fire will modify and change vegetation whether initiated by humans or not. It is evident that a great deal of debate revolves around technical issues about fire behaviour and very little about fire policy. A coherent fire policy that accounts for emerging matters such as carbon storage in the biomass and the soil is required.
The colonial development and exploratory period yielded many lessons that could have been learned but, rather than be triggers for policy implementation, were instead only picked up in the late twentieth century after a considerable lag. Some
policy during the period was promulgated as a result of previous experience in vegetation management undoubtedly from elsewhere in the colonies or beyond. The enactment of legislation that prohibited certain weeds is the best example of this. There is no evidence of enforcement of this legislation and no accessible
information discovered that would indicate whether the legislation was effective. The potential lessons to be learned from this period included a failure to effect actual changes in vegetation management, primarily due to a poverty of government administrative structure. Once Acts were promulgated their enforcement was not backed up by expertise in the public service. There is a lack of evidence for policy development, or any consideration of ways of doing things, such as with different policy instruments or programs. Perhaps of greater significance was that the piecemeal fragments of legislation and the intent behind them would have been overwhelmed by a pioneering spirit of resource exploitation and ―taming the land‖. This no doubt pervasive attitude indicated that the public thought at a primitive level about resource policy and that a social learning process was well short of the maturity it required to meet the resource management challenges of the time. So not only was there an apparent lack of social or conceptual learning, but the most basic level of learning in Fiorino‘s (2001) typology was not being met.
An early potential lesson that had been partly learned, but not sustained or fully implemented, would cause a compounding problem still being grappled with at present. The reduction in the extent of forests yielded no immediate lessons, because only benefits from this activity were noticed. The practice was encouraged through instruments such as land grant conditions and reward schemes. This continued in various guises well into the twentieth century. Some contemporary opinion was expressed about loss of valuable timber through ringbarking practices and fires. Yet the lessons sought were from a different social and economic
imperative—how to effectively convert wasteland or bush into productive land. Only in the late twentieth century have the results of research indicated the need for a different paradigm. Some knowledge was no doubt accumulating during the colonial and exploratory period about the economic values of native vegetation in the form of species useful for toolmaking, food, medicine and other practical products. This was gradually being lost over the ensuing periods, particularly
following the depopulation of the rural areas after the 1930s. The values of native grass pasture may have been evident in early years (Kirkpatrick and Bridle 2007) but management for sustaining these is a mixed experience. Some argue that the expansion of the Themeda triandra grasslands of valley slopes and the maintenance of the Themeda grassy woodlands and Poa tussock grassland on the valley floors is a fine demonstration of knowledge established through observation and then
adopted and carried forward through generations. However, the orderly progression and refinement of policy on vegetation was almost entirely absent during this period as the colony struggled to establish itself as an economic entity. This process was inherently contrary to processes that might have existed in Europe, for example, where economies had been evolving over hundreds of years.
The development consolidation period seems to have been characterised by an almost complete focus on economic development and was contemporaneous with a neglect of policy governing natural resource management, with some qualified exceptions. The rise of industrial forestry did lead to some policy development that stemmed from the lessons of the previous period, which was marked by
considerable loss of resource through wasteful practices. One example of the recognition of waste was through a report by Legge who complained of the
destruction of many stands of Oyster Bay Pine, which was everywhere ―swept away by axe and fire‖ (Legge 1911:7). The lessons learned and carried forward from period to period are indicated in Table 6, where an attempt to type the different learnings is also made. The development consolidation period was also marked by the expansion of infrastructure, whether it was water supply, hydro-electricity development, roads and the expansion of suburbia. These activities were spurred on by the economic growth that followed the two world wars. An important
development during this period was the commencement of inventories of natural assets including river flows and discharge, soils, geology and mineral resources and timber volumes and distribution. Work on forest inventory really gained momentum following World War II and was assisted by the inception of systematic aerial photography in 1949. These surveys would lay the groundwork for evaluation and monitoring of natural resource use and management in a later period. During the development consolidation period there was the adoption of vegetation-affected land and resource practices from overseas. These included the national park idea,
the adoption of scientific native silviculture principles, and the establishment of scientific resource inventory.
The almost three decades following the development consolidation period, and which I have called the environmental period, marked the inception of the modern era where policy development was able to become a legitimate and necessary part of the vegetation management landscape. The lessons from failures in the previous history of natural resource use had accumulated to the extent that the period was begun by one of the most important policy instruments of the time for vegetation management: the proclamation of the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1970. A major characteristic of policy during this period is the demonstration of policy transfer, beginning with the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1970, which was taken from the NSW model at the time. Once the National Parks and Wildlife Service was set up in Tasmania much of the administrative model was also adopted from the NSW Service. Indeed, many staff were recruited from the NSW Service.
We have seen how policy learning has been incorporated into the vegetation policy landscape over the last two decades. Some programs have adopted a technical learning capacity through monitoring and evaluation. Other programs have been qualitatively reviewed at the level of policy effectiveness. When closely examined, there seems to be no common policy framework driving these requirements. A response to an international obligation stimulated the evaluation of management effectiveness in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. The clients for this evaluation were perceived to range from the land manager to the Australian Government to the UNESCO World Heritage Convention bureaucracy.
The new governance period post-1997, in many ways, is marked by a conscious application of public policy principles and is indicated by the number of explicitly described policy officer positions, around 15, in the largest natural resource agency —the Department of Primary Industries, and Water. Although this is only indicative of some of the changes that were happening, it is nevertheless significant. Greater attention began to be given to policy and program processed that implicitly
acknowledged the policy cycle. The resulting reviews and evaluations are discussed later in Chapter 6.
The period coincided with the initiation of the 30-year policy framework that was to govern the forest resource. This framework was known as the Regional Forest Agreement and stemmed from the need to put forestry onto a visibly sustainable footing with monitoring and evaluation processes built in. This was to avoid the often bitter debates that raged around forestry matters in the public arena. The period was also characterised by the acknowledgment that vegetation management needed to be subject to monitoring and evaluation, both at an operational on-ground level and at a policy and program level. This was going to require information. The requirements for such information really came to the fore in this period. This was the time of the establishment of the National Land and Water Resources Audit, which was charged with the assembly of national resource information, including vegetation information. A new period had arrived that was information-hungry and in which feedback and adaptive management was paramount. Perhaps the most significant development in this period was the establishment by all jurisdictions, led by the Commonwealth, of the Native Vegetation Framework. This was set up as a means of evaluation of policies and programs in vegetation management.
Towards the end of the Howard federal government (1996–2007) there appears to have been a trend towards intense government consolidation and an increased focus on accountability of program results. This trend, in a national context, will be discussed in Chapter 5.
Vegetation management has been a policy-free zone for much of the period of Australia‘s European history. There were some initiatives promulgated that stemmed from concern at protecting agriculture, particularly commercial species and sites of tourism interest. This was the case during much of the nineteenth century and the major change came with the formation of state governments under an Australian Federation.
Table 6: Policy learning and vegetation management Period Evidence of policy learning or
other theoretical attributes Issue/link through Pyrogenic pre-
industrial Scant evidence of lessons carried into the next stage (except perhaps fire use).
Landscape settings established.
Colonial
development and exploratory period 1797–1901
Policy transfer. first settler fire
management apparently carried on from Aboriginal practice
weed Acts—experience elsewhere in agricultural settings. forestry inquiries Development consolidation period 1901–1970
some lesson learning. Field work by Legge and
preparation of report. Science-instigated policy
inadequacy of existing legislation with regard to reserves carried into next period.
Callitris management most likely
leading to ―no cutting‖ policy in
forestry coupes in later periods.
Environmental
period 1970–1997 policy transfer social learning political learning by advocates.
adoption of NPWA 1970 based on NSW legislation
public becoming educated about the matters relevant to vegetation policy development within the broader framework of natural resources policy. The new governance period 1997–present social learning evidence of Advocacy Coalitions. OECD reports.
some policy convergence on national level through ANZECC and COAG frameworks.
Dore report.
monitoring and evaluation built into programs, notably the NHT1 and NHT2.
What works and what doesn‘t on the ground.
separate policy-learning evaluation through NVF
technical learning conceptual learning.
Adapting to new framework of climate change and carbon management.
evidence of policy
convergence at national levels through evaluation, elite networking and policy communities, harmonisation and penetration.
Nationally consistent guidelines- access to genetic resources.
The massive societal and economic changes throughout the twentieth century had little traction in the policy field until the 1970s, but around Australia there was a dawning realisation that natural resources previously seen as limitless needed to be the focus of some policy attention. Although there are few examples throughout the period between 1900 and 1970, it is clear that policy instruments, and they were mainly Acts and regulations, were devised in response to the needs of a particular industry, whether this was logging or tourism. Resources for managing these instruments were meagre and probably best regarded as token. There was no overarching learning framework. It is argued that the most significant policy framework for native vegetation management throughout these historical periods was firstly in the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1970, which was to be later supplanted in policy importance, by the Regional Forest Agreement 1997.
3.9 Chapter Summary
Up until the present, five distinct periods mark the evolution of vegetation policy development in Tasmania, although the pyrogenic pre-industrial period precedes European settlement and is included as a partly speculative baseline useful in assessing subsequent on-ground changes in vegetation. The four post-European settlement periods all display some aspects of policy learning or other
characteristics attributable to some policy analytical types. There has been very scant coordinated policy development for vegetation until the environmental period when the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1970 was promulgated. Serious
application of policy principles began from around the start of the new governance period in 1997 when overarching vegetation policy frameworks began to be
developed, the most significant for Tasmania being the Regional Forest Agreement. Having now set an historical context for the development of vegetation policy it became apparent that there were sparse examples of policy-learning transfer from period to period. This provides appropriate background for my description, in the next chapter, of the current structure of the vegetation policy environment in Tasmania.
This chapter has focused on the evolution of vegetation policy, using a linear- temporal narrative approach but with references to aspects of path dependence and
institutional or policy change theories. Some changes between periods are
characterised by paradigm shifts while, in other cases, layering is evident. In terms of path dependency there is what appears to be a punctuated equilibrium pattern over at least the few periods after 1970.
The chapter has reflected a story of increasing sophistication and spread of vegetation policy and has not dwelt on what policies were not developed at any time. In contrast, the following chapters describe the policy framework at the time of writing and will necessarily begin to point to the shortcomings in the current policy framework.
WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS: THE CURRENT TASMANIAN VEGETATION POLICY LANDSCAPE
4.1 Chapter Aims
Having established in the previous chapter a historical context for Tasmanian vegetation policy the present chapter will document the current vegetation policy landscape and give it a brief policy landscape context. The results of this chapter will provide the context for the gap analysis and the vegetation policy framework proposed in Chapter 6. This will follow a critical analysis of the vegetation management outcomes generated under the existing policy regime. In particular, this present chapter will outline the major policy instruments and policy actors that currently influence vegetation policy. Existing mechanisms for effecting policy will be examined. This descriptive treatment will then provide a basis for observations on the articulation of vegetation policy in the state.
4.2 Introduction
Current vegetation policies are a legacy of the last two hundred years of European settlement. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the majority of the current instruments have been developed only in the recent twenty-five years following a general shift in society‘s perception that there were many environmental-related concerns that should engage more government attention. In Chapter 3 we saw this as a paradigm shift at the end of the development consolidation period (1901– 1970). Very little in the way of lesson learning in the broad sense was evident over the first one hundred and seventy years. The subsequent rapid development of the vegetation policy landscape led to many instruments that were responsive to public concerns. Joined-up policy appeared to be lacking.
This chapter is purely descriptive and where the nature of the implementing
machinery is explored and assessed in terms of evidence of joined-up policymaking or lesson learning. It will list the principal legislation relevant to Tasmanian
state government, local government, NRM regional groups and non-government actors. The implementation of vegetation policy is illustrated by some examples, and while the chapter is not intended to be an exhaustive compendium of vegetation policy, it will be sufficiently detailed to show the working nature of this area of public policy. From this it should be possible to draw some conclusions that will assist in the subsequent gap analysis in Chapter 6, and then construction of a model framework in Chapter 7.