Company part-owned by Angus Taylor challenges ‘critically endangered’ listing of grasslands it poisoned

Jam Land, the company part-owned by the energy minister Angus Taylor and his brother Richard, has filed a legal challenge to the validity of a listing designed to protect native grasslands in the New South Wales Monaro region.

The challenge to the protections is part of a case filed in the Federal Court on Christmas Eve that is appealing the outcome of a ministerial review. The review affirmed that Jam Land had illegally cleared up to 28.5 hectares of natural temperate grassland on a property in Corrowong in southern NSW and required the company to remediate. It also found the clearing to be in breach of a civil penalty provision of the environmental protection legislation.

Although Angus Taylor's interest in Jam Land is through an indirect shareholding, it puts him in the unusual position of being connected to a case challenging the decision of one of his government's own ministers.

Guardian Australia has been told the minister is not involved in the court case. However, when the clearing was first investigated, he made representations to the department and the office of the then environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, about the listing of the grasslands.

In 2020, three-and-a-half years after Jam Land sprayed herbicide on the property, an investigation by the department concluded the grasslands had been removed illegally and ordered Jam Land restore 103 hectares of grasslands on another part of the property.

The company sought a ministerial review of that determination. In December a delegate for the environment minister affirmed the original findings and the remediation order.

In its appeal, the company is challenging the remediation determination and is seeking a declaration that the listing of the grasslands as critically endangered in 2016 by the then environment minister, Greg Hunt, was invalid.