The list of sins and errors committed by the NSW State Government is now so extensive, it must qualify for some sort of record outside the Third World.
History may best remember this government for stuffing the economy of Australia's largest State in a period of unequalled prosperity.
I think it's greatest crime was committed early on, in the early days of its tenancy in Macquarie Street.
When Bob Carr led the first version of the NSW Labor government to power in 1995, he inherited a rare and valuable circumstance.
After 200 years of fighting against nature, farming as a sector was embracing it for the first time. The volunteer energy of the Landcare movement was surging, and farmers were beginning to form an image of themselves as stewards of the landscape.
Had this cultural transformation been properly nurtured, it could have changed conservation in the State, and Australia, by blurring the lines between farming and environmentalism.
Instead, Mr Carr and his ministers squashed it flat. They rolled out a series of Native Vegetation Acts, beginning with the infamous SEPP 46, which treated all farmers as tree-clearing vandals.
These Acts assumed that all native vegetation is good vegetation.
Native species like cypress pine and galvinised burr were given license to form monocultures—something that didn't happen under the Aboriginal land management that gave us our "native" landscapes.
Trust was trampled. The Carr government held extensive and wearying consultations, demanding considerable time from dedicated people, and then threw the results aside and implemented their own agenda, thrashed out behind closed doors with the Green movement.
And in the end, the Acts have been if not toothless, at least gappy.
Small farmers were daunted from clearing small patches of land; big operators went right ahead and knocked down large swathes of virgin bush, accepting the weak fines as part of their development costs.
NSW's native vegetation acts may have saved some native vegetation: how much is a moot point.
But handled differently, the process could have saved native vegetation and and helped cultivate a powerful on-farm conservation movement.
A similar story has unfolded in other States, encouraged by deep Greens whose ideology is apparently more important to them than real conservation.
There are still hundreds of farmers dedicated to on-farm conservation, but distrust of government and the Green movement is now so entrenched in the farm sector that any green-tinged proposal brings most farmers out in a rash.
Which brings me to Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett, and his plan to add 31 million hectares to the national conservation estate.
This might be an outstandingly good idea. A healthy environment is in all our interests.
The problem is that to date, Mr Garrett hasn’t satisfactorily explained why it's an outstandingly good idea, or why this in itself will result in a healthier environment.
And he's proposing this move at another transformational time in history, when another opportunity has arisen to blur the line dividing "agriculture" and "environment".
With climate change has come the realisation that agriculture offers our biggest carbon sink. In order to operate as a carbon sink, farming has to encourage nature to do its thing better—create more fertile soils, more biomass.
Properly handled, this evolving realignment of farming with natural systems could see a re-energising of the concept of agricultural land stewardship.
About 60pc of Australia is used for agriculture. Agriculture isn't separate from the environment; it is our environment.
Talking about setting aside 31m hectares "for the environment" reinforces a division that ideally, shouldn't be there.
There's no question that large chunks of agricultural land suffer from bad environmental management.
There are also farms and stations that sustain as much, or more, biodiversity than nearby land set aside for conservation.
Mr Garrett must ensure that as he steps forward, the agricultural sector doesn't step back.
Creating a more rich and robust environment across 31m ha is a great thing to aspire to.
It will be much greater if it's done with agriculture as a partner.
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