Senate debates

Tuesday, 18 September 2018

Matters of Public Importance

Koala Population

5:43 pm

Photo of John WilliamsJohn Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a bloke once said, the first thing you learn in life is that you can't educate idiots. How true it is! I'm going to say that I agree with Senator Rice—we should protect the environment of the koalas—and with those opposite, the Labor Party, saying we should look after the environment. But I tell you who's destroying the environment: the National Parks Association and the national parks.

I'm very proud that on our farm of 400 acres, of which about 80 per cent is cleared, we have a great colony of koalas. They are safe because we graze sheep, we keep the fuel levels down and, if lightning strikes, we don't get a savage fire that kills the koalas. Senator McAllister said, 'There's been an 80 per cent reduction of koalas in the Pilliga.' Of course there's been that sort of reduction in the Pilliga. The Pilliga Forest didn't even exist 200 years ago. It's grown in 200 years. Under forestry, they allowed grazing and timber milling in it. An old timber miller told me one day that when he was a kid you'd hardly ever see a koala. He said—this was 15 years ago—'Go down to the creek tonight and you won't sleep for the noise of them.' They have the strangest noise, if you've ever heard the noise of a koala. But what we've done, because of the Greens and the Labor Party, especially the New South Wales government under Bob Carr, Senator Faruqi—

Senator Faruqi interjecting—

However you pronounce it. I apologise. They locked up the country and left it. They wouldn't have hazard reduction burning. They wouldn't allow graziers to keep the fuel levels down. Once you get more than five to 10 tonnes of fuel per hectare, with a 40 degree day and a 50 kilometre wind, the fire is uncontrollable. No grazing; they don't keep the fuel levels down; and what happened to the Pilliga six years ago? It burned from one end to the other in a savage fire, because it's all national park now with no hazard reduction burning and no reduction of fuel levels. I wish the Greens and Labor would go and talk to Professor John Wamsley, who did his research for years. For thousands of years the Australian countryside was grazed by little kangaroos, millions of them, and native animals. What happened to them? They're extinct. Why are they extinct? Because some fool brought foxes here. That's why they're extinct. So now the National Parks Association lobbies the Greens and the Labor Party to lock up all this country, leave it all unmanaged and let it burn and kill the animals in it. That's what they call conservation. It is an absolute disgrace. You wonder why 80 per cent of the koalas are dead in the Pilliga. It's because of the Labor Party locking it up in national parks.

They say that you can't have grazing of sheep and cattle in a national park because they have hooves. You can't have hooved animals in a national park. Half the national parks are live with wild pigs, feral goats, brumbies and deer. None of those run around in ugg boots. They've all got hooves at the bottom of their legs. It's alright for them to graze the national park, but don't allow proper grazing and keep the fuel levels down. When are you going to learn that you can't lock up country and leave it? If you do the grass grows, the rain falls, the grass grows, the grass dries out, the lightning strikes and it burns. When you get the savage hot fires, what do they do? They get up into the crown of the tree, they kill the trees, they're so hot on the ground that they kill the native grass and native seeds.

This is destruction of our environment. Make no mistake about it: the Labor Party in New South Wales begging to the Greens, the Greens pushing it with the National Parks Association, have caused a huge loss of our environment and the death of koalas. Make no mistake about that. You can't argue about it. Come to my farm, Senator, and have a look at the koalas. I'll show you the photos on my phone in a minute, out the front of the house, how my wife goes out all through summer and puts water dishes at the bottom of the trees so they've got plenty of water. They've got the creek to water in as well. Koalas do need water. They don't drink a lot of it, but if the trees are getting dry and the year has a dry summer, as we get at times, the eucalypt leaves don't contain enough moisture, so they do like to get down from the tree and have a bowl of water. I would bet that my wife and I have done more to save koalas than any other senator in this place, because we make sure they stay alive on our farm. We don't let them get burnt. We keep the fuel levels down, and they are safe and happy and also very healthy. I'm very proud of that fact. It is just unbelievable, this whole green religion, how you think you're going to save the planet when in actual fact you're destroying it.

As I said, fuel levels are the big issue. The country was grazed for thousands of years—history will show that. There were millions and millions of small kangaroos, only a foot high. Sadly, they are extinct because things like the foxes were brought to Australia. In the last 100 years, half the animals in the world that have become extinct have come from Australia, because of things like the foxes and the feral cats and so on—animals that have been brought here and upset nature. Of course all we'll get from the Greens and others is, let's ban 1080. Don't kill the feral pigs, the wild goats and the foxes that are destroying the environment—target the farmers, target the coalition government. How ridiculous is that?

The senator says climate change is a big cause. Well, let's go to the Black Saturday bushfires, that terrible time in Victoria with the loss of life and loss of property. Half of the country burnt, roughly, was national park. It was full of fuel. I remember one bloke there cleared the area around his house. They fined him something like $40,000 for knocking down trees, but it was the only house left standing after the fire because he got rid of the fuel around it. Ninety million tonnes of CO2 was released into the atmosphere from the Black Saturday bushfire. Australia produces 550 million tonnes in total. But disregard the 90 million tonnes from the bushfire—half of them in the national parks. Those CO2 levels don't matter. We don't pay any attention to them. Even the department said: 'Don't worry about bushfires, Senator. When the grass burns it puts the CO2 into the atmosphere, but when the grass grows it neutralises it.' If that's the case, when you want to ban grazing and wind back farming activities, you can do the same here: if the animals are putting out greenhouse gases, just remember they eat the grass and it regrows again. If that's equation you want to live on, we can do the same.

The koala is Australian. The koala and the kangaroo are as Australian as you can get. Koalas are a wonderful animal. As I said, we are very pleased to have them on our farm and have them doing very well. We had University of Queensland koala inspectors come down to our property. My wife took them around. They had a little Jack Russell terrier dog, who was the spotter for the koalas. Even our sheepdogs look for the koalas. The kelpies look up in the trees for them. Of course, they don't harm them. The dogs can't climb a tree. Anyway, the inspectors were very pleased with the way the koalas were looked after on our property, the feed supply they've got. Of our property of 400 acres, at least 80 per cent is cleared for farming country. The hundreds of trees, eucalypts, down the creek are a great home for the koalas, and they thrive. There is plenty of water and plenty of cover and, most of all, there's protection from bushfires. That is the point I'm making.

I saw the Pilliga Scrub six or so years ago after a fire went through there. It was just amazing. It was just black sticks. When you walk into those forests after they've been burnt, the thing that's so amazing is the silence. There's not a bird. You don't hear a tweet. You don't hear a bird noise. You hear nothing. The whole environment has been wiped out. That will continue to happen so long as the green movement, pushed by the National Parks Association, continue their whole ideology of how they're going to protect the animals and the planet and the environment. They are 100 per cent wrong. Of course, it's a race to the bottom for the Labor Party in trying to secure the votes the Greens are taking off them. The end result is the destruction of our environment—total destruction.

The Tenterfield fires were about 15 years ago. My good friend Rick Colless MLC—you'd know him very well, Acting Deputy President Leyonhjelm—went up there and, after walking through the forest after it was burnt, he said that all he heard was silence. There were no animals left there. It destroyed the lot. Why was that forest destroyed? Because of the fuel levels underneath it. If you're not going to go on the journey to reduce the fuel levels, this destruction of our native trees, our native forests and our native animals will continue.

As I've said, they won't allow grazing. They don't let the sheep in, like we do on our property. It's funny; the koalas thrive at home with the sheep around. They don't worry the koalas one bit. They have no effect on the koalas, but the sheep do keep the fuel levels down and they're not faced with having their lives destroyed through fire. You can't put sheep in open areas in a national park. They say, 'No, that will damage the environment.' It will save the environment. I will say it again: the destruction of our native trees, our native forests and our native animals is brought about through locking up country and leaving it. It's as simple as that. And what do you do with national parks? You lock it up, you leave it and you destroy the trees and the animals that live in that environment. The Greens and the Labor Party will continue to go down this stupid road of the destruction of our environment.

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