Regenerative farming in Australia is being held back by bureaucratic red tape, according to one of the nation's leading farm advocacy groups.
The not-for-profit Mulloon Institute was named by the United Nations in 2015 as one of five global demonstrators of sustainable, productive and profitable farming.
But its flagship research initiative has stalled because of planning laws.
The group's Mulloon Creek Rehydration Initiative aims to install 90 creek-bed structures along 50 kilometres of degraded catchment in the southern tablelands region of New South Wales, south-west of Sydney.
The so-called "leaky weirs" slow water flow, promote more biodiversity and spread groundwater into the surrounding floodplain.
Lawyer Matt Egerton-Warburton said the group was spending up to 10 times more on planning approvals than building the structures. Fewer than half of the planned leaky weirs have been approved after more than 15 years.
"You've got to get approvals from five or six state government departments, planning, environment, fisheries, water, and each of them are asking for expert reports before they give their consent," he said.
"So it's costing us, you know, tens of thousands of dollars just in regulatory approvals and time before we even build the structure."
Late last year the NSW government changed planning laws so that rehydration projects don't need planning approval from local councils anymore.
Calls for a new national planning code
Mr Egerton-Warburton is chair of the Mulloon Institute's law committee, which is pushing for a new national planning code to make rehydration and regeneration projects easier Australia-wide.
The group is being advised by leading environmental law expert Gerry Bates, whose seminal book Environmental Law in Australia is now in its 10th edition.
"Every state and territory has their different regulations, but most of them would say, 'OK, we need to protect biodiversity, we need to protect fisheries, we have to remember Aboriginal and cultural heritage', and so on," Dr Bates said.
"A national planning code would recognise common principles and save time and money," he said.
"If we can encourage the federal government to actually come to the party on this, it could be the biggest, most important change to regeneration of the Australian landscape since Federation. It's that big. It's that important."
The Mulloon Institute's chairman Gary Nairn, who was a minister in the Howard government, was optimistic that state, commonwealth and territory governments would agree to a national code.
"I think the will is there between the states and the federal government," Mr Nairn said.
"It's not a partisan matter, and it really addresses some of the issues that have been raised around the environment through the State of the Environment report and other environmental legislation reviews.
"We've got a better process now than when I was in the parliament. The national cabinet is the ideal way to take this through."
Mulloon Creek rehydration initiative
More than 20 landholders along the Mulloon Creek are collaborating on the whole-of-catchment rehydration initiative, which aims to restore the natural function of the waterway to how it operated before farming began in the region in the 1820s.
The biggest landholder is Richard Graham, an information technology entrepreneur, who has been waiting more than 15 years for approvals to rehabilitate the creek through his farms.
"My background career is in software, and in software, you have an idea today, and tonight you're programming it, you're making it happen, and tomorrow afternoon you're selling it," Mr Graham said.
"So this process here, where there are so many steps in the way, it's extraordinary."
He said he was frustrated that since enthusiastically embracing the project 15 years ago, record-breaking drought, flooding rains and bushfire had worsened the Mulloon Creek and sent thousands of tonnes of silt down the system and into Sydney's water catchment.
"What we're seeing here on the ground now is messed up. This isn't how it should be — this is what it shouldn't be." Mr Graham said.
"And so what we need to do is get past this fear that somehow we're going to screw up nature and instead let us get to the work."
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