"You and your boof-headed party, Mr. Gulaptis, and the appalling anti-environment government which you are part of, will be responsible for the extinction of koalas in our region...."

 

Chris Gulaptis MP, the NSW Nationals & Koalas

Our local State MP Chris Gulaptis, the Nationals’ Member for Clarence, has claimed that he loves Koalas like every other Australian. The Grafton Nannas believe he has a very strange way of showing this recently-revealed affection.

Since 2011, when the Nationals came into government in NSW, they have been pressuring their Coalition partners to weaken biodiversity protection. This has resulted in significant weakening of both native vegetation legislation and State Forest logging regulations. Both of these changes have had serious impacts on biodiversity - including on koalas.

Koalas have suffered from a range of impacts in recent years including climate induced drought and bushfires as well as dog attack, car strike and disease. But a major cause of their decline has been habitat loss. The NSW Nationals have had a big role in recent years in ensuring that habitat loss is accelerating.

In September we had the unedifying “dummy spit” drama where the Nationals threatened to withdraw from the Government because they objected to the Governments’ Koala SEPP (State Environmental Planning Policy) which had come into operation in March after being negotiated in late 2019. This SEPP was a slight improvement on the years-old model which had failed completely as a koala protective measure.

Chris Gulaptis was one of the prime movers in this melodrama.

Shortly after Premier Gladys Berejiklian called their bluff, the Nationals, many of whom did not want to lose their ministerial perks, backed down.

There was considerable speculation about why the Nationals had suddenly found the SEPP so intolerable after it they had had input to its development and it had already been on the books for around six months.

It seemed to boil down to lobbying by certain property developers, Nationals’ supporters who were worried they might have difficulty is pursuing their plans for rural subdivisions or residential development on urban outskirts because they would need to put in development applications to councils. This would then trigger the SEPP. So it appeared Nationals politicians like the prime mover Chris Gulaptis believed these interests should outweigh the protection of koalas which are on track to extinction in NSW by 2050 unless really effective measures are put in place to protect them and their habitat.

Following the Nationals’ backdown, there were behind the scenes negotiations between the Coalition partners that led to significant changes to the Koala SEPP. Unsurprisingly the Liberals caved in and the SEPP was watered down. For example the definition of core koala habitat became more restricted and developing a Koala Plan of Management was made more difficult for councils.

That was bad enough, but the extent of the Liberals’ spinelessness became more apparent with the appearance of the Local Land Services (LLS) Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2020. It further limits any opportunity to protect koala habitat.

This Bill has since been passed in the Legislative Assembly.

The Grafton Nannas held a knit-in protest outside Chris Gulaptis’ Grafton office on Thursday.

In a letter to Mr Gulaptis which was delivered to the office, we expressed our disgust with him and his party.

Below is the text of this letter:

LLS Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2020

“When we wrote to you in September about your party’s koala protection dummy spit, we expressed our disgust at your determination to undermine koala protection at a time when it was urgently needed. At that time the Nannas thought it would have been impossible to be more disgusted with you and your party.

“The changes to the Koala SEPP that followed the rapprochement of your party with the Liberals showed the Nannas just how weak was the Government commitment to ensuring koalas were protected and rescued from their slide towards extinction.

“And then, just to show how unimportant biodiversity protection and the fate of koalas was, the Liberals pandered further to the Nationals with the LLS Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill which has now passed in the Legislative Assembly.

“You and your boof-headed party, Mr Gulaptis, and the appalling anti-environment government which you are a part of, will be responsible for the extinction of koalas in our region, if not in all NSW.”

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Leonie Blain

Grafton Knitting Nannas Against Gas and Greed