Koala park delay prompts fear Labor has folded to logging industry

A former Labor environment minister has criticised the Minns government for its ongoing delay in creating its promised Great Koala National Park, while allowing logging of state forests within the proposed boundaries to reach “dangerous proportions” that threaten the ecological integrity of the future park.

Bob Debus, a revered party elder, told The Sydney Morning Herald he was concerned by new analysis from Wilderness Australia, the organisation he chairs, and National Parks Association that suggested another 2000 hectares had been logged inside the assessment area since last October. NSW Forestry Corp said this was an overestimate.

A logging site in Wild Cattle Creek State Forest, part of the assessment area for the Great Koala National Park.Credit: Janie Barrett

“I find it harder and harder to understand what is delaying the decision,” Debus said. “It is simply unreasonable that this should go on any longer, when, after all, there is a standing promise made three times that the larger koala national park will be created.”

The NSW government has promised since 2015 to create a Great Koala National Park on the Mid North Coast. Since the March 2023 election, it has assessed up to 176,000 hectares of state forest to add to existing national park, while the final park would be up to 315,000 hectares.

The forestry and timber industry and unions have called for a much smaller park to protect regional jobs, and there has been a flurry of lobbying in state parliament in the past few weeks.

Environment Minister Penny Sharpe told budget estimates on Monday the park would be announced “soon”. Sharpe said she understood people were impatient, but the work needed to be done properly so the government could be confident it made the correct decision. While the consultation panels concluded last year, Sharpe said “some of it remains contested”.

“The facts in relation to these matters are not easily agreed by people and [working through] that is really part of what government is doing,” Sharpe said. “It’s a really important thing for us. Anything we do there would have an impact on communities … there are a lot of positives, but let’s be up front – there will be an impact on timber jobs.”

In February, the Australian Workers’ Union and the CFMEU manufacturing division brought a delegation of NSW Forestry Corp and timber milling workers to parliament. Representatives of timber industry lobby groups and environmental activist groups have also been spotted in the building in recent weeks.

Yarriabini National Park is slated to become part of the koala national park.Credit: Janie Barrett

Labor backbenchers and Greens MPs have shared fears cabinet could be swayed by the lobbying campaign, including the AWU’s claim that up to 9000 jobs would be threatened. That figure is heavily contested.

Debus said: “If people are spooked by this nonsense argument put out just recently that 9000 jobs are under threat then, frankly, they’re not paying attention”.

He said it was inevitable lobbying would have some effect, but he had faith that competent cabinet ministers could explain the true situation to voters.

Tony Callinan, NSW AWU branch secretary, said taking workers to parliament allowed MPs to hear directly from those affected in the timber industry “what it means to them to have a secure job in regional NSW”.

While Callinan could not confirm the source, the 9000 jobs figure appears to have come from a 2023 Ernst & Young report commissioned by the hardwood industry, which found there were 5290 direct and 2980 “indirect” jobs in the hardwood industry, including plantations, across the state, not just on the North Coast.

When asked about the figure, Callinan said: “I hope we never find out exactly how many jobs are lost. I don’t want to see any jobs lost.”

Frontier Economics estimated in a report for WWF that direct employment in public native forest logging in NSW was about 1070 jobs across the state.

North East Forest Alliance estimated the creation of the koala national park would threaten 118 to 218 direct jobs in northern NSW, with a similar number of indirect jobs, and pointed out that this paled in significance next to the NSW timber industry shedding 7992 jobs over 15 years due to restructuring.

Last week, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water released research suggesting 12,000 koalas lived within the proposed boundaries.

A Forestry Corporation spokesperson said regulations included many protections for koalas and that timber harvesting was 15 per cent lower than the volume harvested from the same area in the previous 10 years.

“Forestry Corporation has also implemented the NSW government’s direction to protect koala hubs in the assessment area, which has resulted in timber harvesting permanently ceasing in 12,000 hectares of state forests in the assessment area.”

When Debus was environment minister from 1999 to 2007, the NSW forestry industry underwent significant reform and restructuring. Debus said it was a harder decision then because more jobs were at stake, and the crisis affecting threatened species and the need to abate climate change was not as stark.

The AWU was also forced to correct a press release issued on the same day as the lobbying visit, after an enquiry from this masthead revealed it had inflated the NSW koala numbers by at least 300 per cent.

Callinan said the AWU had no intention to mislead and had corrected the record as soon as it became aware of the error.

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