Three reasons Minns backed the full Great Koala National Park

1 week ago 3

A little-known decision by NSW’s biggest electricity network last year to ditch timber power poles paved the way for NSW Premier Chris Minns to back a Great Koala National Park at the full 176,000 hectares.

Minister for the North Coast Janelle Saffin, Premier Chris Minns and Environment Minister Penny Sharpe at Bongil Bongil National Park on Sunday.

Minns, who announced the decision to create the park in Coffs Harbour on Sunday alongside Environment Minister Penny Sharpe, Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty and Minister for the North Coast Janelle Saffin, said he was aware of the impact on timber workers and that he had not taken the decision lightly.

“We’ve decided to go for the largest option. And there’s a simple reason for that. We are faced with the situation where koalas will go extinct in the wild by 2050 unless we make this decision,” Minns said.

“I’ll be honest with you – there was a real temptation to take a compromise in relation to the size of the park, to protect more industry and narrow and shrink the size of the Great Koala National Park.

“We made a decision that [a compromise] would be the worst of all worlds – there would be an economic impact on the industry, but … [not] long-term preservation of the greater glider, of the koala, and other threatened species.”

Minns said he and his cabinet colleagues had been persuaded by three important factors, including the evidence on threatened species and the “enormous potential to market the Great Koala National Park as the next stage of the evolution of tourism in regional NSW”.

The government is spending an additional $60 million on visitor infrastructure such as picnic grounds, campgrounds, walking trails and mountain bike tracks to create what Sharpe described as a “world-class park”.

“I want when visitors from overseas come here, they go and see the reef, they go and see Uluru, and they come to the Great Koala National Park,” Sharpe said.

The other significant factor that proved decisive for Minns was a decision last year by Essential Energy, the electricity network that covers 95 per cent of NSW, to phase out wood for composite power poles made of fibreglass and resin, mainly to reduce bushfire risk.

The move by Essential Energy will have a significant effect on the timber industry in the region of the Great Koala National Park. Before this decision, the Mid North Coast provided timber for 90 per cent of power poles in NSW and 70 per cent nationwide, according to the Australian Forest Products Association.

Koalas were added to the federal list of endangered animals earlier this year.

“[Essential Energy’s] decision to get out of hardwood for their telegraph poles made a big impact on me in terms of the future of this industry,” Minns said. “It doesn’t mean there’s no future for the [forestry] industry, but it does mean that it’s substantially changing.”

The creation of the park will throw the spotlight onto the future of logging in the state’s public native forests, a practice that has been halted in several other states including Victoria. The Minns government is working on a forest industry action plan that it says will achieve a sustainable timber industry that aligns with key environmental priorities.

Minns said it would be impossible to finalise a plan without certainty about the size and nature of the Great Koala National Park, “so one had to come before the other”.

The news that the park will be full size – all 176,000 hectares of state forest assessed will be included and joined with 300,000 hectares of existing national park – and logging will cease immediately was met with joy and relief from environmentalists, and fury and devastation from the timber industry and unions.

The government estimates about 300 jobs are affected by the moratorium and it has provided a package for six mills to stand down workers on Jobkeeper-style arrangements, in the hope of achieving certainty of wood supply for roughly 19 other mills in the region.

Australian Workers Union NSW branch secretary Tony Callinan said the government had overridden the advisory committee in announcing such a large park and that he would press for a better deal for workers.

“I’m very angry, very confused and disappointed that a Labor government has placed the desire of the green lobby ahead of the workers it was formed to assist,” Callinan said.

Brook Waugh, the owner of Thora Mill near Bellingen who employs about 35 men, said he was reeling from the news.

Brook Waugh, manager of Thora mill, who sources timber from forests that may be locked up by the establishment of the Great Koala National Park.

“To say I’m devastated is just an understatement,” Waugh said. “In one respect, I’m glad my grandpa and my dad have already died because my grandpa built our mill, and we’ve managed to keep it going all these years through the hard times and kept people employed.”

The government has said it will delay legislation to create the park in the hope of being able to earn carbon credits for protection of the forest. Minns said the government wanted that federal scheme to work for the park because it would be an important source of revenue.

“We expect it to come through, but obviously these are decisions that are outside the NSW government’s decision-making,” Minns said. “We don’t anticipate major changes there, but we’ll have to look at ways of creating the Great Koala National Park based on their decisions.”

Minns said Labor did not control either the upper or lower house, so legislation would need support from the crossbench or Liberal MPs prepared to vote against their National colleagues.

Opposition Leader Mark Speakman said: “The NSW Liberals support having more ambition to protect koalas, but the government has left some questions unanswered.”

Coalition agriculture and regional NSW spokesman Dugald Saunders, a National, said it was a “massively crushing blow” to people who had been in limbo for 2½ years.

“They’ve had uncertainty, they’ve had fear, they’ve had a lot of mental anguish about this, and [now] Labor’s delivering a killer blow to what is a vital industry,” Saunders said.

North Coast-based Greens MP Sue Higginson said she was “jubilant” about the decision, though she was critical of the destruction that had been allowed to occur during the consultation.

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