Surely no one would put forward the argument that the case to change a law is strengthened if someone becomes so enraged by it that they have allegedly murdered the government official charged with its enforcement. Surely not.

Actually, someone has. Commenting on the alleged shooting of environmental officer Glendon Turner by farmer Ian Turnbull, NSW Nationals MP Andrew Fraser reportedly said: “It’s a tragic event that I think has been brought about by bad legislation.”

No Andrew, it’s is a tragic event brought about by someone firing a gun.

Fraser’s comments were reported in the Daily Telegraph, which on Friday carried a front page story quoting Turnbull’s family saying that they “hoped the tragedy would help prompt change to the Native Vegetation Act to give farmers more say in the clearing of their land”, alongside a “key points” box outlining the “red tape nightmare” farmers face as a result of the laws.

It is true that farmers have long complained about the land clearing laws. They don’t like to be told what they can do on their properties. The debate has raged for almost 10 years in the political arena.

And in recent years those opposed to the laws in NSW have been gaining ground – with several changes to regulations that loosen requirements on farmers and a major review to report by the end of the year expected to weaken them much further.

But it is also true that the laws were put in place for very good and nationally important reasons – reasons often overlooked by those arguing the case of the frustrated farmer.

Radio host Alan Jones was cleared of a charge of inciting his listeners to violence in 2010 when he took up the case of a farmer fighting the land clearing laws.

But the Australian Communications and Media Authority did find Jones guilty of breaching the broadcasting code by ignoring alternative views.

Those would be the kind of views that led to the implementation of the NSW Native Vegetation Act in the first place – including the very pressing need to protect wildlife habitats, soil quality and water catchments and to limit greenhouse emissions that cause climate change.

That pressing need to reduce land clearing has been widely accepted for a very long time.

In 1996 the Howard government was elected on a policy to have no net loss of vegetation across Australia by 2000 - a pledge which would effectively require the end of large scale land clearing.

In 1997 Howard signed bilateral agreements with all of the states to implement national heritage trust laws, including the requirement to reduce the rate of land-clearing to stop biodiversity loss and land and water degradation.

And in 2000 he signed a National Plan for Water Quality and Salinity at COAG which, among other things, required states to “institute controls on land clearing by 2002” to stop land and water degradation.

Reduced land clearing, especially in Queensland, during this time also allowed Australia to meet its target under the Kyoto protocol without doing very much else at all - and a resumption of land clearing as several states move to weaken land clearing restrictions will obviously make meeting Australia’s subsequent 2020 emissions reduction target far more difficult.

By 2003 the Carr Labor government in NSW passed the Native Vegetation Act with the support of conservationists, farmers and scientists and it came into effect in 2005.

And it succeeded in dramatically reducing the rate of land clearing. According to a WWF report there has been an 88-fold reduction in areas approved for clearing from 80,000 hectares per year (from 1998 to 2005) to 911 hectares per year (from 2005 to 2013).

Exactly how it is implemented, and what requirements are placed on farmers, is a matter to be argued out in the review and through the NSW parliament.

But across the nation, such laws obviously remain necessary, given that Australia’s 2011 “state of the environment” report states “the rate of land clearing, one of the most significant pressures affecting the land environment, is slowing, but still averaged around one million hectares each year over the decade to 2010.”

“The condition of much native vegetation is deteriorating, particularly that remaining as fragmented remnants in intensive and settled land use zones, and that subjected to persistent pressures such as inappropriate grazing or fire regimes,” the report to the federal government said.

Lots of people get annoyed, pressured and ground down by lots of different laws. They are still required to obey them.

Opponents of a law can make the case for changing it on policy grounds, but even suggesting that these tragic circumstances might strengthen the case for changing that law sets a breathtakingly irresponsible and dangerous precedent.

• Andrew Fraser’s office was contacted for comment