Draft Submission to the Crown Land Reserve Committee of Management Guidelines

Please provide comments on the following submission to the Victorian Crown Land Reserve Committee of Management Guidelines

We will send the submission off in late May 2011

Victorian Crown Land Reserve Committee of Management Guidelines
River Basin Management Society
Submission
April 2011

The River Basin Management Society

On behalf of the River Basin Management Society (RBMS) I write to you in regards to the the guidelines for Victorian Crown Land Reserve Committee of Management. The RBMS commend the Victorian Government for their willingness to open a discussion into this very important issue.

The RBMS is a key representative body for professionals working with land, water and natural resource management (NRM) in Australia, and as such are eager to support management arrangements which better NRM, such as crown land management.

The following submission is based on a reading group held to review the guidelines, held in April 2011.

Style of the guidelines
The content in the guidelines is appropriate for such a document. However, further work could be made to present the information and the opportunity of being in a CoM in a positive light. Rewording in a lighter fashion would be of benefit. Focusing on the positives and also highlighting groups that have worked well as case studies, examples or quotes would create more variation in the flow of the document and interest for the readers.

Introduction
Some further introduction to the current status of CoMs in Victoria would be of benefit at the start of the document. Summary statistics such as the area under CoMs and the number of groups and their size. How many COMs are there across Victoria? What is their average number of members? How much land do they manage? This would be interesting.
Detail what groups CoM are currently made up of, i.e. passionate community members (volunteers) or agencies.
Detail how CoM have changed over the past 100 years. Some case studies might work well here.

History of the guidelines
Detail the history of these guidelines - why do we have these guidelines and how have they improved Committees of management?

Who should manage CoM?
Mentioning the groups that are the most appropriate to be CoM would be a good addition. Especially highlighting groups that haven’t in the past, but could. i.e. could you provide some information about the role of Parks Victoria and Councils as Committees of Management. What is the role of the CMA in appointing a CoM?

Cost to manage CoMs
Further mention of the difficulties of running and finding funds to run the CoM and any associated works should be made. Suggestions could be site sitting fees, or revenue from the public utilising certain features (such as boat ramps).

Amalgamation
Options such as amalgamation of CoMs would be a good idea to highlight. There is no rule which stipulates that one reserve = one CoM. Operating a small CoM for a small piece of land would be a difficult process and in this light, amalgamation would be an efficient option - such as has occurred along the great ocean road.

Prioritise
Some form of prioritisation of reserved land would be a great option, i.e. we should be able to identify the land that requires considerable effort to manage because of it’s high value or threats, while smaller pieces and less valuable land could be identified as lower priority and resources appropriately allocated in this light.

Evaluation
There is no discussion of how CoM are held accountable other than through financial reports. What are the standards that are expected of committees as they manage the land and how is this validated? Some form of performance reporting is required to keep CoM accountable.

What is reasonable utilisation of the land? How do we prevent unreasonable use?

Promotion
CoM have a valuable role in our community. More advertising of the option to be on CoM should be made by the Victorian Government, to encourage greater participation and increase expectations of management - i.e. for public benefit.

CoM networks
There is no sense of networks encouraged for CoMs within the guidelines. Some form of council of CoMs should be encouraged to help create discussion and links across committees, i.e. an organisational CoM.
Further to this, information on all of the CoMs should be made available on a Victorian Government website, so that groups can be contacted by the public when required, afterall these committees are established for the benefit of the public.

Recognition of CoM
CoM complete a valuable task for Victoria, however, there is little recognition of the hard work completed by these works. The Victorian government should be noting and promoting and rewarding outstanding achievements when they occur.

Newsletter
The RBMS would encourage the creation and distribution of a CoM newsletter, which can be used to disseminate important updates, promote good practice, create a stronger link between CoMs and also increase public awareness of their activities.

Level of effort
Some measure of the level of effort required to run and CoM would be of benefit in this document, so that members are fully aware of the time and responsibility they would be taking on.

Priority of management
A statement of the priority for management should be made in the document. The RBMS would encourage the following order of priority when making decisions on the use of public land: 1) environmental values, 2) public access/ social, 3) economic.

Volunteers
The guidelines should mention how CoMs can work alongside other volunteer groups such as Landcare, for support and collaboration and in the contacts section make mention of volunteer other organisations e.g. http://www.volunteer.vic.gov.au/

On page 17, please include some more information about the importance of Volunteer recruitment, retention and recognition and some examples of how to do this. A written job description is important for Volunteers, just as it is for employees.

Yours sincerely

Joanne Hand
RBMS President