Vikki Campion: Farmers will suffer while the Libs try being green
It’s ridiculous to suggest koalas should live in and eat native pine trees. A tree a koala may walk past is not a reason to protect it, more than a culvert a funnel-web lives in makes it a sacred site, writes Vikki Campion.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Barilaro’s position as deputy premier now ‘untenable’: Elliott
- Barnaby Joyce: ‘Good on the Nats for saying enough is enough’
- Labor the only winner in Coalition’s koala collapse
The meeting went for a minute and a half. That’s all it took for Premier Gladys Berejiklian, Mark Speakman and Treasurer Dom Perrottet to deliver an ultimatum, leaving the room before the Nationals MPs could utter a single word.
They were told to either keep in goosestep with the Liberal Party room or they were out with less than 24 hours to consider the ultimatum — and all because of this insane hypothesis that farmers are out here clubbing koalas in the bush.
The Premier’s ultimatum was clear — ministers should back in the executive — or she would go to Government House at 9am the next morning and select a new cabinet.
So let’s think that through for a minute. What would a urban-independent-Liberal cabinet deliver to regional NSW?
It will be the solar farms and the wind factories that they won’t accept off their own beaches.
The Shooters are rubbing their hands with glee, and the Labor Party is quietly cheering on.
Before they had left the room, the Liberal Party press statement had landed in every newsroom.
The author of the original tree review, who works in koala biodiversity, believes his study has been misrepresented and under the Liberal plan will lead to worse conservation outcomes for koalas.
Cabinet documents show the new species list includes trees that koalas don’t eat — even invasive species — such as the black she-oak and belah.
Under the proposed guidelines, a property 5km away from this “food source” can be deemed core koala habitat, even if the last sighting was up to 18 years ago and even if the koala doesn’t care for the leaves.
Imagine if the government came to your house to protect the humble Sydney funnel-web spider — also not found anywhere else in the world.
It doesn’t have the anthropomorphic majesty of the koala but is just as Australian.
You can’t renovate or repair your home within 5km of where a funnel-web has been seen because it’s a Sydney funnel-web habitat. This is an important issue for the arachnid conservationists of South Tamworth, who will turn up at polling booths dressed as funnel webs if you don’t protect them. As I write this, below me are she oaks, which under these plans are listed as a koala habitat. I am more likely to see a stegosaurus on that tree than a koala. Koalas don’t eat casuarina — or in layman’s terms “pine-tree”.
It’s ridiculous to suggest koalas should live in and eat native pine trees. A tree a koala may walk past is not a reason to protect it, more than a culvert a funnel-web lives in makes it a sacred site.
This is purely about optics for forlorn hope of getting Green preferences at the next election after last year’s fires which branded the Liberal left “koala killers”.
But let’s remember the koalas didn’t starve to death, they tragically burnt to death because we didn’t allow people to backburn, created excess fire load and ended up with a prolonged disaster.
No human being, no matter how perverse, wants to hurt a koala and we don’t need an Oxford alumni in Planning Minister Rob Stokes to tell us that.
The Nationals are sick of the bush being the collateral damage of city-centric Liberal guilt.
And so are the people the party was established to represent. It’s also worth noting it is not just the bush that will suffer.
Under the current plans, the Sydney houses and roads on the fringe, about to be redeveloped to accommodate growth, are considered koala habitat. It means the Newcastle foreshore is a koala habitat which cannot be developed.
The Nats have been working on this in good faith and out of the public eye for six months but have been flushed out because they have been ignored.
They want it resolved and know that with just a dash of maturity they can get the right balance between offering safe havens for koalas and protecting the rights of farmers.
Unfortunately, they have been trying to negotiate a compromise with people such as Liberal MLC Shayne Mallard, who sat beside Clover Moore for more than 10 years at Sydney City Council deliberating on what poetry to write on the garbage trucks. Something had to give.
By the time you read this, it will be business as usual for the NSW government. The coalition agreement is a business partnership and in business you fight for the best deal.
You don’t peddle defective products because the shop next door tells you to.
Here, the constituent is the customer and if they don’t like what the Nationals are selling they will shop at the Shooters Fishers and Farmers.
Top Nationals trust that when it comes back to cabinet, it will be a different policy, and one worth getting in the viper’s pit for.