MP needs to check his claims about the Great Koala National Park

DEAR News Of The Area,

FOR nearly 10 years I taught history and legal studies. I taught students to check a claim before they shared it. If Gurmesh Singh’s letter (‘Carbon park misses the mark’, Page 27, NOTA, 27/10/26) had landed on my desk, it would have come back covered in red pen, with a note at the bottom: “Back up your claims”.

Cards on the table: I’m a Labor Party member. We’re the party of a fair day’s pay, in the mill or on the farm, and we don’t leave workers hanging when jobs go. Mr Singh talks about jobs but not the help for the people in them, and about trails closing but not what the park still allows.

The park directly affects just six of more than 25 local timber mills. Mr Singh says “thousands of jobs on the Mid North Coast are tied to the timber industry”, but most are unaffected by the park.

Up to 300 jobs are affected, some in Coffs Harbour, and each one is somebody’s pay packet. If it’s yours, here’s what Mr Singh left out.

After 20 years in a mill, you can get 80 weeks’ base pay, up to $150,000. On top of that, every year worked after age 45 adds three more weeks’ pay, up to $50,000. That’s up to four times the award.

There’s up to $9,000 to retrain and $45,000 to move for work. Around 100 new National Parks jobs are coming, with affected Forestry Corporation workers first in line.

Parliament passed the park by a landslide, with Mr Singh’s own Coalition partners, the Liberals, voting for it. Conservationists have called it the most significant outcome for forest conservation in NSW in the last 25 years. It will protect more than 12,000 koalas, 36,000 greater gliders and habitat for over 100 other threatened species, and it will matter even more as the climate warms.

Mr Singh writes that “people can already walk, camp, drive and ride in these forests”. In the park, the Government says, they still can, though not everywhere, and National Parks is working with users to ensure most activities can continue.

That’s the right way round: a park run with the people who use these forests, not just for them. Parts of Wedding Bells, Orara East and Lower Bucca, the forests locals visit most, go into the park. What changes is that the trees stay standing.

The Government expects an extra 85,000 interstate and overseas visitor nights a year.

Finally, Mr Singh says koalas “sit high in the canopy”, so visitors “will leave our region disappointed”.

He’s right about the canopy. When Penny Sharpe, now the Environment Minister, announced Labor’s park plan at the Coffs Harbour Botanic Garden in January 2023, this paper reported that “fortuitously, a koala was present high up in a tree”.

It was there for anyone who looked up, and most tourists will be looking. Koalas aren’t too hard to spot if you look carefully and mindfully, just as you should do when politicians start making claims.

The people of Coffs Harbour deserve better than half the story. When Mr Singh gets his facts wrong, he should be challenged.

Come March, the red pen will be in the hands of voters.

Regards,

Sean VAN DER HEIDE,

Urunga.