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Posted: 2018-12-18 02:55:25

Private land conservation - aimed at paying landholders to conserve biodiversity to offset an expected increase in native vegetation clearing - got the biggest allocation of $43 million.

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“The Berejiklian government now uses this fund to fill holes in its general budget and to underwrite its ecologically disastrous land-clearing laws or to pay for environmentally harmful projects like raising the Warragamba Dam wall," Kate Smolski, the council's chief executive, said.

“Spending on emissions reduction measures from the fund slumped as a proportion of total expenditure from 86 per cent to 54 per cent in just one year while spending on projects that won’t reduce our emissions more than trebled."

Environment Minister Gabrielle Upton rejected the claim the money was being diverted from climate issues.

"All monies spent from the Climate Change Fund meet the terms and conditions of the fund,” she said.

'Slush fund'

Cate Faehrmann, the Greens environment spokeswoman, said it was "disgraceful" the government was using the climate war-chest "as a slush fund", and had suppressed public reporting of its performance.

Ms Faehrmann noted the government no longer detailed how the fund was performing against "key deliverables".

It had also ceased reporting how much water, electricity and carbon-dioxide saved via the fund's outlays each year since 2014-15, and had halted reports of its return on investment since that year as well.

Adam Searle, Labor's newly named climate change spokesman, said the fund had "clearly been misused by the Berejiklian government".

"Money to tackle climate change has been redirected to make up for budget cuts to core services," he said. Mr Searle a Daley Labor government if elected next March, would take "climate change seriously", including boosting the transition to renewable and affordable energy.

Peter Hannam is Environment Editor at The Sydney Morning Herald. He covers broad environmental issues ranging from climate change to renewable energy for Fairfax Media.

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