The two major parties’ leaders are demonstrating their colossal ignorance and refusal to deal with a grim future and the most critical issues facing this nation, writes Sue Arnold.
THE RECENT CATASTROPHIC U.S. election campaign taught several important lessons — lies work and warnings about the impending loss of democracy don’t.
It’s fair to ask if the same scenario is happening in Australia as a federal election looms. The most critical issues facing this nation are the environment and the impacts of massive immigration.
Just as climate change effects can’t be divorced from biodiversity loss, neither can the environment’s carrying capacity be quarantined from reality. Yet voters are faced with the two major parties’ leaders demonstrating their colossal ignorance and refusal to deal with a grim future.
Mainstream media focuses on playing up the divisions between Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton, but no one asks the hard questions.
What are the environmental policies of Labor and the Coalition parties? Will Dutton or Albanese include a climate trigger in assessing major projects if they win power? Will Albanese or Dutton take steps to end native forest logging?
Will either party address the appalling loss of wildlife?
The koala is an excellent example of the complete disregard of Australia’s most iconic species.
Whilst arguments rage about the celebration of Australia Day, no one mentions the sacred Dreamings of Indigenous people in relation to many wildlife species or the angst elders are experiencing as they witness the slaughter.
A recent analysis of federal and relevant state legislation in relation to any protection for koalas or their habitat demonstrates there is no viable protection.
Nor are there many opportunities for legal action.
Bilateral agreements allow each state or territory to assess proposed actions – projects or developments – on behalf of the Australian Government.
N.S.W. native forestry legislation contains a privative clause that denies public citizens the right to take legal challenges — leaving only civil challenges.
Federal government logging legislation denies public citizen rights
The legal situation is a comprehensive denial of democracy removing the rights of public citizens’ efforts to protect endangered species. A situation that is mutually agreed upon by both major political parties.
Never mind Australia has the world’s worst record of mammal extinction. Forget the three billion animals that died in the 2019-2020 bushfires. Ignore the scientific research, concern and genuine outrage.
In the last century, millions and millions of koalas were killed for the fur trade, finally stopped by then-U.S. President Herbert Hoover. Scientific evidence demonstrates the population has never recovered.
In 1906, the killing increased to an estimated 450,000 to 1 million skins per season.
Any one of these annual harvests killed more koalas than are alive today, according to Nature Conservancy.
In 2025, population numbers are a guessing game. The only hard cold evidence published on the Federal Government’s species profile database demonstrating major declines in Queensland, N.S.W. and nationally was removed shortly after Albanese won government.
In 2010, the now-removed species database estimated a national population of 407,500 — with a decline of 29 per cent since 1990.
Under Labor, the CSIRO was given the responsibility for estimating the population. CSIRO’s estimates create further dark holes of data destined to be the foundation of any government’s non-requirements to act.
In March 2024, the agency’s estimate for a national population based on modelling was 224,000-524,000. Any reputable scientist will confirm this figure is almost meaningless given the extraordinary gap in numbers.
IN 2021, the estimate for N.S.W. and Queensland populations was 92,184.
In 2023, the estimate for N.S.W. and Queensland populations was 117,050-244,440.
In 2024, the estimate was 95,000-238,000.
In other words, koalas are like rabbits. In the space of two years between 2021-2023 – according to CSIRO modelling – koala populations could have increased almost three-fold if the 244,440 estimate is correct. A biological impossibility.
Given the Black Summer bushfire mortality of koalas – estimated at 60,000 by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) – and the ongoing loss of koalas to disease, habitat loss by urbanisation, native forest logging, infrastructure, mining, dieback, drought, flood and no climate impact legislation, CSIRO’s estimates are not only a guesstimate but lay the groundwork for ongoing misinformation.
Not one single koala state can provide scientific evidence of any sub-population of koalas increasing anywhere. Declines are ignored and estimates given have no scientific credibility.
Recently, The Guardian reported on the Australian Conservation Foundation analysis which found almost 26,000 hectares of threatened species habitat was approved for clearing under Labor in 2024. The clearing is more than double the previous year.
In 2024, the Albanese Government approved the destruction of 3,003 hectares of koala habitat — which is more than triple the amount approved in 2023.
A federal court judgement in January 2024 resulting from a legal challenge by the North East Forest Alliance on the Government’s failure to assess the status of threatened and endangered species likely to be harmed by the timber industry, passed the buck to politicians.
Justice Perry’s judgement stated:
“…the question of whether or not to enter into or vary an intergovernmental agreement of this nature is essentially a political one, the merits of which are matters for the government parties, and not the Courts, to determine.”
The National Koala Recovery Plan is mandatory in Commonwealth areas — but not at the state level.
The plan has been transformed into a paucity of meetings – populated by government bureaucrats with no independent scientists – focused on anything but the major recommendations of the Plan.
A koala referral scorecard that provided the opportunity for self-referring projects to estimate the potential damage to habitat – thus requiring an approved management plan – was ditched by Labor and replaced by an even weaker set of guidelines that place no obligation on developers to self-refer projects.
Unfortunately, it’s not only koalas facing extinction under the policies of the major political parties but many other equally endangered, threatened species and ecosystems.
The big questions voters need to ask
When will the major political parties and governments recognise the global environmental crises and the ramifications of their refusal to act?
How can Labor have a platform on renewable energy and approve 32 fossil fuel projects?
How can the Coalition support nuclear energy and claim it’s environmentally sound?
How many droughts, floods and bushfires does Australia have to endure before action is taken?
More to the point, legislation made by both major parties in government that denies public citizen rights is extremely concerning for any democracy.
If we cannot protect our environment legally, the future may resemble the deteriorating environmental situation in the U.S. The ramifications of Trump’s fossil fuel decisions and eradication of critical environmental regulations can be repeated in Australia.
The groundwork has been laid.
Sue Arnold is an IA columnist and freelance investigative journalist. You can follow Sue on Twitter @koalacrisis.
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