PRIME MINISTER MORRISON'S $50 MILLION PLEDGE FOR KOALAS A SMOKESCREEN

North East Forest Alliance Media Release

30^th January 2022

Scott Morrison's announcement of $50 million for Koalas is a smokescreen to cover-up his Government’s approval for increased logging and clearing of Koala habitat, while allowing climate heating to run amok, threatening the future of both Koalas and the Great Barrier Reef, according to the North East Forest Alliance.

“Without good policies on habitat protection and climate change no amount of money will save Koalas, said NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh.

“If Scott Morrison was fair dinkum about protecting Koala habitat the first thing he would do is to stop their feed and roost trees being logged and cleared. Money is no good for Koalas if they have nowhere to live.

“The second is to take urgent and meaningful action on climate heating, as Koalas and their feed trees have already been decimated by intensifying droughts and heatwaves in western NSW, and bushfires in coastal areas.

“If the Morrison Government doesn’t take urgent action on climate heating then neither Koalas nor the Great Barrier Reef will have a future.

“When the Morrison Government issued an indefinite extension to the north-east NSW Regional Forest Agreement in 2018 they agreed to remove the need for Forestry Corporation to thoroughly search for Koalas ahead of logging and protect all identified Koala High Use Areas from logging.

“They also agreed to overriding the NSW Governments own expert’s panel recommendations, supported by the EPA, to retain 25 Koala feed trees per hectare in modelled high quality habitat, by reducing retention down to just 10 smaller trees.

“Thanks to the Morrison Government we now have a shoddy process where a few small trees are protected in inaccurately modelled habitat, while loggers rampage through Koala’s homes, and if a Koala is seen in a tree then all they need to do is wait until it leaves before cutting its tree down.

“Now Scott Morrison is allowing the Forestry Corporation to log identified refuges in burnt forests where Koalas survived the fires.

“The situation on private lands is just as dire. Morrison did nothing to save Koala habitat when his State National Party colleagues declared war on Koalas in mid 2020 and forced his Liberal colleagues to agree to remove protection for mapped core Koala habitat and to open up protected environmental zones for logging. This too is covered by Morrison’s Regional Forest Agreement.

“If he really cared about the future of Koalas the first thing Morrison needs to do is amend the Regional Forest Agreement to ensure there are surveys by independent experts to identify core Koala habitat for protection before clearing or logging.

“Paying for the surveys and providing assistance to affected landholders would be a good use of taxpayers money.

“The second thing is to stop new coal and gas projects, because to have any chance of saving Koalas and the Great Barrier Reef we must act urgently to reduce our CO₂ emissions, rather than increasing them.

With the assistance of the Environmental Defenders Office, NEFA is challenging the validity of the North East NSW Regional Forest Agreement on the grounds that the Commonwealth has not duly considered climate change, threatened species and oldgrowth forest. The case is listed for hearing by the Federal Court on 28 March.

“For the future of Koalas, and our growing lists of threatened species, I hope we are successful” Mr. Pugh said.

 

AN EVOLVING CLIMATE POLICY???

Recently I wrote about the possibility of politicians being given a wake–up call as a result of the climate change induced drought and megafires.

There have been some tiny signs that this may have happened with the federal government. 

 

The most dramatic of these came from the federal Science Minister, Karen Andrews, who said that time should not be wasted discussing if climate change is real.  She, unlike some of her more conservative coalition colleagues, obviously accepts the reality of climate change.   She claims that unnecessary debate could distract from the urgent need to develop new bushfire adaption and mitigation techniques.

This sounds very promising and is part of what for months former bushfire chiefs such as Greg Mullins have been calling for.

However, while dealing with the bushfire threat in the long term certainly requires much more effective action from both the federal and state governments, such action does not address the crucial issue of Australia’s totally inadequate carbon emissions reduction policy.

The Prime Minister has also shown he has had a small wake-up call.  He supported Minister Andrews’ announcements which was an improvement on his earlier positioning – including the ridiculous “now is not the time to talk about climate change”.

However on the broader matter of climate policy, Scott Morrison confirmed that the Government would be sticking with the emissions reduction target it took to the election.  But in what he presumably thought would give some comfort to the increasing numbers of the community who are calling for a much more effective emissions reduction policy,  he said that the Government’s climate policy would continue to “evolve”.

So what does that mean?  Very little.  It is nothing more than typical Morrison spin.  It means that the government will go on as before pretending that all that is needed are a few cosmetic changes to convince the electorate that it is doing as much as can be done.

Australia does not have enough time left for Morrison’s policy to "evolve".  Communities here and around the world urgently need stronger climate action from their governments.

            Leonie Blain

This article is an edited version of the VOICES FOR THE EARTH column published in The Daily Examiner on 20 January 2020.