© Provided by The GuardianPhotograph: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images
A senior New South Wales government minister last year warned rules to protect koalas in the state would be "ineffective" if rural land was made effectively exempt, as the Coalition now proposes.
In a letter sent in August last year, the planning minister, Rob Stokes, told the deputy premier, John Barilaro, that the new rules would lead to about 80% of land being exempt from a planning policy that is supposed to help save the koala from extinction.
© Photograph: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty ImagesNSW planning minister Rob Stokes wrote to deputy premier John Barilaro last August warning that his proposal to carve out rural land from the koala protection policy would exempt 80% of the land in the state.
On Monday, the NSW Liberal and National parties announced they had agreed to new rules for koala protections after a dispute over koala policy last year threatened to split the Coalition.
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Under the changes, rural land zoned for primary production or private forestry will be carved out from a new koala state environmental planning policy (Sepp) that will come into force this year.
The government said the new Sepp would apply to land on which more than 95% of development applications were made.
But core rural zones in some areas would be made exempt from the policy once new local land services and private native forestry codes are developed over the next month.
The new policy would apply across all zones, including rural areas, within metropolitan Sydney, the Blue Mountains and the Central Coast.
The NSW Greens pointed to documents released through a parliamentary call for papers last year in which Stokes warned that exempting rural lands could make the new koala protections ineffective.
In his letter to Barilaro, Stokes said the aim of the Sepp was to reverse the decline of koala populations in NSW.
He said removing rural zoned land from the policy would, on average, lead to more than 80% of the land in each local government area covered by the existing policy being excluded.
"The Sepp would be ineffective if it only applied to a small portion of land in each [local government area]," Stokes said.
The Greens MLC Cate Faehrmann said:
"How can the premier save koalas from extinction when her government's signature policy will now not cover most of the state?"
Chris Gambian, the chief executive of the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, said most of the prime koala habitat across the state was likely to be in rural zoned areas.
"To exempt rural land is to essentially say that everywhere that John Barilaro cares about doesn't need to worry about the new koala Sepp," he said.
"How do we know there's going to be a private native forestry code that adequately protects koalas? We don't. We're being asked to take their word for it."
Under the revised policy, rural zoned lands in regional NSW will continue to be covered by an old koala policy - known as Sepp 44 - that was developed in 1995 until the new local land service and private native forestry codes are developed.
In response to questions from the independent MLC Justin Field in an estimates hearing on Tuesday, Stokes said he would keep the 1995 policy in place if he was not satisfied the new codes provided "at least as good as and preferably much higher" protections.
But there was confusion in the hearing when Field asked which policy would apply if there were proposals to expand agriculture in the state's north.
Officials replied that once the new codes were developed, those hypothetical agriculture proposals - if they that required developmental approval - would be covered by the new koala policy, known as Sepp 2021.
Field said this was not clear in the government's media release released on Monday night. "I suspect someone should have a bit of a closer look at that," he said.
Field told Guardian Australia: "This policy didn't stand up to half a day of questioning in budget estimates before it started to fall apart."
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The government's media release does say that any rural development not covered by the yet-to-be-released codes will be subject to the new koala policy.
Field said he was concerned the government's plan failed to address the threat private native forestry posed to koala habitat.
"The public are being asked to believe that the National party, who have railed against regulation on rural land to protect koalas, will now work collaboratively to develop a new private logging code to do just that," he said.
"What is clear is that the koala wars within the Coalition are set to continue in NSW."
Stuart Blanch, a conservation scientists with WWF-Australia, said the fight over the koala policy pointed to a bigger issue in NSW.
"There is no commitment to an independent external review of land-clearing laws in the state and that is what we need," he said