Her new push to ban the clearing of regrowth vegetation would indicate not, and shows either an appalling ignorance of the environment or an equally appalling whatever-it-takes attitude to win Greens preferences to secure the up-coming State election.

It has been widely argued that the lack of control of regrowth vegetation was a contributing factor to the ferocity of the Victorian bushfires.

And while Queensland thankfully does not have a history of mega-fires like those of southern Australia, it does have a history of regular backburns conducted by graziers and before them by the Indigenous.

Instead of megafires, there are other consequences to the lack of control of vegetation regrowth.

First, regrowth diminishes productive capacity - a 2003 departmental report which the State attempted to hide from the public estimated that the economic cost was in the vicinity of $900 million (net present value over 25 years).

Second, that economic loss is caused largely by vegetation thickening, a process where the understory of scrub chokes out native grasses and thus the livestock which depends on them, leaving a bare and barren ground often susceptible to erosion. Government reports at the time warned of the environmental impact of vegetation thickening - the thicker the scrub the less native flora and fauna, with a specific threat detailed to certain parrot species which depend on native grasses.

It must be remembered that much of Queensland, and many other parts of the country, prior to white settlement, was open woodland ideal for grazing. Old graziers now report thick woodlands in areas that were open native grasslands when they were children.

Clearly the absence of fire, or alternative mechanical controls of regrowth have an affect on the environment.

But when Labor's ban on broadscale clearing was introduced to State Parliament in 2004, the Minister at the time, Stephen Robertson, explicitly warned farmers against trying to circumvent the clearing ban via the use of fire to control regrowth.