The key 2a · the region
The key, couplet 2a, and the region
The garden plants under the same ban, and the Coast’s own list
Bitou bush, lantana and Cape broom are three of the many weeds on the region’s list under a prohibition on dealings. Three more sit under a measure that names the Central Coast Council area in the core infestation area, and one duty sits under all of them.
General information from NSW Government sources; the native plant law is in the Biodiversity Conservation Act and the parks’ own rules, and the National Parks and Wildlife Service is the place to ask; the weed rules are the ones the Department of Primary Industries’ WeedWise lists for the region.
Lantana and Cape broom, under a prohibition on dealings
The key’s second question sorts the region’s list by the kind of listing a plant carries, and the first kind is the flat one. Lantana and Cape broom sit under a prohibition on certain dealings, as bitou bush does, and so do many other plants on the same list. Check the full WeedWise list before you sell or swap any plant.
Each carries the same sentence as the bitou bush entry, and the bitou bush guide on this site sets that sentence out whole: the plant must not be brought into the state, and it must not be sold, bartered, exchanged or offered for sale. Here it is worth noticing what such a sentence does not need: a nursery, a shopfront or a price. It reaches a swap as well as a sale, and an offer before anything changes hands.
For a reader with lantana in the back corner, the ban reaches any sale or swap, and the general biosecurity duty below still applies to the plant where it grows.
Three plants with the Coast in the core infestation area
The second kind of listing is the regional recommended measure, and it is where the Central Coast appears by name. Three entries carry almost the same sentence, with the Coast at the middle of the map: the Central Coast Council area is classified as the core infestation area, and an exclusion zone is established for the rest of the region. A recommended measure is worded with “should”: within the core infestation area, land managers should mitigate spread of the plant from their land, and a person should not buy, sell, move or carry the plant, or release it into the environment.
The three plants are asparagus fern and sicklethorn, whose measure names the Central Coast Council area alone as the core infestation area, and Senegal tea, whose measure names the Central Coast Council area together with the Royal National Park and the Hawkesbury Nepean River and its tributaries.
Read together, the three listings do two things at once. They tell the Coast what the region thinks it is, the core infestation area for these plants, and they tell the rest of the region what it is to keep out, an exclusion zone. It is the same sentence doing both jobs, seen from the two ends of the map.
| The plant | Its listing, and what the listing says |
|---|---|
| Lantana | A prohibition on certain dealings: it must not be brought into the state, sold, bartered, exchanged or offered for sale. |
| Cape broom | A prohibition on certain dealings, the same sentence. |
| Asparagus fern | A regional recommended measure: the Central Coast Council area is the core infestation area, with an exclusion zone for the rest of the region. |
| Sicklethorn | A regional recommended measure, with the same core area and exclusion zone. |
| Senegal tea | A regional recommended measure: the core infestation area is the Central Coast Council area together with the Royal National Park and the Hawkesbury Nepean River and its tributaries, with an exclusion zone for the rest. |
The duty under every listing
One sentence sits under all of the entries above, whatever kind of listing each one carries. All pest plants are regulated with a general biosecurity duty to prevent, eliminate or minimise any biosecurity risk they may pose.
The duty falls on people rather than places: anyone who deals with any plant, who knows or ought to know of a biosecurity risk, has to ensure the risk is prevented, eliminated or minimised so far as is reasonably practicable. A prohibition is the law at its most specific, and a core infestation area the region’s most specific recommendation; this is the law at its broadest, and it reaches gardens the list never names.
How to read the region’s list
The region’s list repays being read by its headings rather than as a field guide. A plant’s heading is the kind of listing it carries, prohibition or measure; the sentence under it says what that kind of listing asks for; and the note that names the Central Coast Council area is the part that turns a regional list into something a person on this coast can act on.
Taken with the bitou bush guide, the two halves of the key’s second question are now answered: which plants may not be dealt in at all, and which plants put the Coast at the centre of the region’s measures. Both answers end in the same place, the general duty, which applies to anyone who deals with a plant.