The son of a farmer who shot and killed an environment officer involved in land-clearing prosecutions has been ordered to pay $405,000 by the New South Wales Land and Environment Court in Sydney today.
Grant Wesley Turnbull pleaded guilty to unlawfully clearing 508 hectares of native vegetation at his Croppa Creek property near Moree between January 1 and August 20, 2014.
Turnbull submitted to the court that his sentence should take into account that he and his family had already been punished because his father, Ian Turnbull, was found guilty of the 2014 murder of Glendon Turner.
Ian Turnbull died in jail.
Justice Sandra Duggan rejected the submission on the grounds that the clearing was not the reason his father was convicted.
Wow! There is so much to this.
I don’t know psychology well, but it seems sociopathic to make a claim of loss because your father murdered someone and was thrown in jail for it. I worry for the next environmental officer that has to deal with this son. Does he understand how wrong his father was?
New England, if this is the electorate, well i begin to understand why Barnaby Joyce has such a lock on that place. If you can call a single anecdote evidence of a wider attitude to environmental issues. Which I can’t, and shouldn’t; but I now have, take it as you may.
And lastly, but most importantly. There are underlying issues about the Australian attitude to land ‘ownership’ here that we should address as a nation, because these attitudes of, ‘its my land, i can do what i want’ are legally incorrect and terrible for development of any social cohesiveness. But this attitude is widespread.
The key question is, at what point do the rights received in the one-time purchase to a block of land get negated/cancelled by your in/actions? Can they ever? And isn’t that an issue if they are inalienable?