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

I welcome this motion on the grounds that we have seen the destruction of our habitats. I refer to three years ago when the Pilliga Scrub used to be a state forest. When I used to work out there with Tom Underwood, who was a timber miller, he was telling me that in his young days—he started work at about 14 years of age—you would not find a koala in the Pilliga. Now they are ample. He said that what happened is that the Pilliga was shut up in a national park. The levels of fuel and the grass grew, and tens of thousands of acres were burnt and destroyed three years ago. I do not know how many hundreds or perhaps thousands of koalas were burnt. The same will happen in other national parks when we shut country up. The habitats are simply neglected, the grass grows, the lightning strikes, and the savage hot fires burn through there, destroying the timber, destroying the environment, and destroying the animals—especially the koalas—that live in those areas. I hope that a good lesson will be learned out of this inquiry that you must manage your country. You cannot simply shut it up and leave it, as the national parks associations, in conjunction with the Greens and many others in this political field, push to do, with the eventual result of the destruction of the koala population. So I welcome the inquiry.