Hear from The Koalas director, Dr. Georgia Wallace-Crabbe, and Special Counsel Cerin Loane, who discuss law reform relating to habitation loss for wildlife.

Key Presenters:  

  • Dr. Georgia Wallace-Crabbe
  • Cerin Loane, SC, Policy and Law Reform (Environmental Defenders Office)

 

 

Social Justice Lawyering and Volunteering

The documentary film, The Koalas sheds light on a disturbing truth: the very entities entrusted with safeguarding our natural treasures are contributing to the demise of these emblematic creatures. On the East Coast of Australia, where ancient forests meet the urban fringe, koalas are facing unprecedented challenges. As climate change intensifies, wildfires, floods, and extreme weather events wreak havoc on both wildlife and human infrastructure. The Koalas documentary reveals stories of struggle, resilience, and the threatened extinction of an iconic species. For this Justice Talk we are joined by The Koalas’ filmmaker and director, Dr Georgia Wallace-Crabbe and Cerin Loane, Special Counsel, Policy and Law Reform (Environmental Defenders Office) to discuss issues raised in the film about habitat loss, the protection land for wildlife and local environmental issues.

: Good evening, everyone, it’s lovely to see everyone streaming into the Zoom session tonight it's a real pleasure to be welcoming you all here, for the second justice talk this session in our justice talk series for the Brennan Justice and tonight's presentation is entitled ‘Climate Change Habitat and Homelessness: The Koala's Documentary’. Thanks Crystal. My name is Associate Professor Anthea Vogl I am the faculty co-director of the Brennan Justice Program and I'm joined today with a few key members of our team Crystal Meikle: our student programs coordinator, LSS representatives, Declan Bolger and Alexis De Zotti, fellow members of the Brennan Justice Management Committee and fellow faculty members and most importantly our special guests and presenters for this evening: the Koala's filmmaker and director Dr Georgia Wallace-Crabbe and Cerin Loane, special council policy and law reform for the environmental defenders office. Before we officially begin, I want to acknowledge that the UTS faculty of law is situated on the unseated lands of the Gadigal people we pay our respects to elders past and present. Acknowledging them as the traditional owners and custodians for this land, we acknowledge that these lands have always been places of law and today exist within plural legal worlds. I'd encourage you all to pop into the chat where you might be zooming in from and the lands that you are on. I think this acknowledgement today is particularly relevant and that acknowledgement particularly of custodianship over land couldn't be more pertinent for today's discussion and the issues raised in the Koala's documentary that has inspired tonight's event and more broadly issues and themes about land habitat destruction and loss and ongoing environmental threats and crises for this continent's native species. I’m going to take a moment to go over now a little bit of light Zoom housekeeping but we're all fairly familiar with it. I did want to note though tonight's session is being recorded, it will only be used for teaching and learning purposes and for other information sessions flowing from this event. Only those of us who speak and turn our cameras on will be in the recording. There will be time for questions at the end of tonight's session and Declan will be taking over to host our Q&A. I really encourage you all to ask questions and engage and speak to Cerin and Georgia after they've presented, you can do this by raising your hand in the Q&A session, but you can also pop questions in the chat as we go through the session. If you can and you're able to please do turn your camera on when you're asking a question, there are so many members of the Brennan Justice communtiy streaming into the session tonight and it would be lovely to see your faces. Lastly student ROJ points will be accrued automatically for those of you who join the session, if your name on Zoom is different from your name in careers hub just send Crystal a quick message in the chat to let her know, so you can accrue your points. With all of that housekeeping settled it really is my pleasure to introduce you to our guest speakers tonight: Dr Georgia Wallace-Crabbe and Cerin Loane and tell you a little bit about them. Georgia is a filmmaker who has collaborated on documentaries dramas and television series, she has produced films such as Cultivating Murder, on the Murder of a New South Wales Environment Officer in 2014. Georgia has made films in China, in France, in India and Australia and is interested in intercultural and interdisciplinary stories and the Anthropocene. Cerin Loane is a policy and law reform officer currently working at the environmental defender’s office, her work includes writing law reform proposals, engaging with government on draft policy and legislation and providing legal advice to EDO clients on a range of environmental issues including biodiversity, conservation, environment and planning and natural resource management previously. Cerin has worked as an in-house lawyer for government for a nonprofit organization in Mongolia and as a research coordinator with the New South Wales Nature Conservation Council. I can see we have some rich expertise joining us today and a diversity of expertise to discuss a topic at hand. Today's topic, as many of you will know, is inspired by and about the documentary film the koalas and was kindly recommended to us by another faculty member Dr Karen Lee, who's my colleague and teaches with me in administrative law. So, thank you so much to Karen for the connection. You have all had an opportunity to watch this film as UTS law students and some of you may have already done so but I'm sure those of you who haven't yet will be inspired to watch the film after today's presentation. So Cerin and Georgia thank you so much for joining us, I really appreciate how busy you both are and I'm so glad you're able to be here with us tonight as you can see this has been an extremely popular event given it's 6 PM on a Thursday night in the middle of session. So I think the students are really looking forward to hearing from you both and I'll hand over to both of you now for the conversation about the film and then Declan will take over afterwards for Q&A. So, thank you both. Thank you. I wonder if I could jump in first Cerin and say that I should acknowledge my co-director Gregory Miller, who's not with me today, but the film's very much a collaborative work with my business partner and life partner Gregory Miller and so we're co-producers and co-directors of the film and it was a 4-year process and it comes on the back of a number of other environment documentaries and one of which we'll be touching on later called Cultivating Murder, about the wine back of the native vegetation laws in New South Wales. But I thought we'd start with a clip from the film because so many people might not have got to watch it and might feel inspired to watch it after we watch the trailer. Yes, there's a poster for the film and it is available, but it's been screening in cinemas as an impact film with panels discussing the issues raised so this is really the way we like to screen it where we can have a conversation afterwards. So Cerin if we sorry Crystal if we could go to the next screen and jump into the clip that would be great.

 

[Music] I’ll get Joey. Be great if people could not post this on Facebook too by the way. He made the front cover of Time magazine online. Pretty good. Front cover. Without urgent government action koalas will become extinct before 2050, it's not that we don't have the answers it’s that nobody will control the developer. We can't release her in an area where they actually physically got the bulldozers and pulling all the trees down and getting ready for the developments. What we've been doing so far hasn't worked, all the money in the world is not going to save koalas we need to actually stop cutting down the trees they call home. It does in the end come down to cronyism which is about you know the people who are the mates and who have dinner with the minister on a regular basis or have access. This whole forest is gated with cameras and so Gumbaynggirr elders locked out of our forest out of our homeland [Music]

 

Okay great thank you. So, we're going to introduce the topic the first topic which is the issue that the film points to when you watch it which is what's the matter with environment law and why is it not more effective than it is. because the film really points to a lot of issues and so I thought we'd play a clip where some of the experts in the film speak about the levels of government and how things operate and then Cerin hopefully will elucidate a little bit what goes on and help us understand why the complexity? In doing something that the general public so very much want done. You can hit play I think Crystal there's 15 seconds there at black at the start and then we'll hear from Cerin.

 

Sadly, with developments, a lot of these, a lot of this good thinking that happens earlier on in a process is box ticking and as the process develops further, they all disappear or most of it disappears. For that not to happen government needs to be much stronger about it and again that needs, we've got three levels of government in Australia and all three of them need to work with each other as opposed to creating loopholes for these things to fall away. It does in the end come down to cronyism which is about you know the people who are the mates and who have dinner with the minister on a regular basis or have access and if we're not stringent about that like if we buy the lies that they tell us about what they're doing to preserve nature, even though most of us know that that's not really true or we sort of think it's not true we don't really check. If we allow them to get away with that then they will because governments only care about votes,

 

Thanks Crystal. So we're going to throw to Cerin, to tell us about the three levels of government and I'm sure she will if you do you want to be on camera and control the screen Cerin, so you can tell us about the three levels of government and you can issue a disclaimer that Elizabeth Farrelly’s views are not yours and she's clearly a commentator on the issue and she wrote a book called Killing Sydney. Right? That's right, she's a great good commentator if you can read any of her work then I do recommend that. I'm just getting my slide there. I think I've kicked Crystal off now, is that coming through to you all? You just have to make it full screen, you're still on presenter view. That better? Tt's just gone blue though, the text. That's fine that's what… Right clean slate okay so this clip really brought up issues about the three levels of government what governments are doing for koala protection and what role do they each have in protecting koalas. So I might just quickly talk about the three levels of government and then I want to talk about the laws that are in place to protect koalas because, once I kind of show you on the screen you'll be quite surprised to find that there are lots of laws there intended to protect koalas they're just not doing their job and so the question is well why is that the case? So, I'm assuming as law students you all know about local, state, federal levels of government. Let's just quickly break down what they do so. The stat, we'll start with state government smack bang in the middle and they're the ones that make the laws through the state parliament so they're the ones that can kind of set the strategic direction for the state, say what you can and can't do in terms of land, they're the ones that are really driving the statewide policy and the statewide laws. And then under our planning system the state government can set up statewide state environmental planning policies. So, they can direct the vision that they want for planning in New South Wales, and they do actually have a state environmental planning policy for koalas so a government. I think the first one came out in the early mid 90s. So, the government at the time decided okay this is such a significant issue for the state, that we will put in place a state policy to direct planning decisions about koalas and the other thing that state governments do, is they're responsible for approving and enforcing state significant development and infrastructure. So, when it's a state significant issue they take the planning control and the planning decisions off the hands of local government and the state has the responsibility to make those decisions. So that's where they sit. And then we've got the local government and they're responsible for approving local development and enforcing local development approvals and controls. They're the ones that prepare our local environment plans which set out the land use zoning and they will need to comply with the state policies that are set by the state government, but they are able to kind of put in place their local planning controls. They develop koala plans of management in their own local government areas, which are things that the state policy says that local councils should do. The problem is that it's not mandatory and at the moment there's only a handful of councils that have actually put these koala plans of management in place and have really specific planning controls around koalas through that framework. And then the other thing local councils can do is that they can identify trees in urban areas that they want to protect, within their local government area and which you might require a permit for. And then on top of all that we've got our federal government and they can regulate environmental matters under the external affairs power in the constitution and they currently do that through the environment protection and biodiversity conservation act and that act has a role to play when you're undertaking an action that's going to significantly impact a matter of national environmental significance, and that includes listed threatened species, under that federal law, of which the koala is one. So, our federal laws also have a role in protecting the koala, because the government has made those laws, listed the koala as threatened and so in addition to any local or state planning approval that you might need or activity approval in the case of forestry or land clearing, you may also need to go and get federal approval as well. So, all arms of government have a role to play in protecting koalas. They've all got laws policies frameworks in place. I'll just kind of give you a bit of a snapshot about some of the laws that apply to koalas and koala habitat because it kind of demonstrates that, it's not it's not that simple there's not just one law one rule to bind them all, that applies to koalas. So, I'll focus on New South Wales because that's where most of us are and where I practice. First of all, we've got national parks and reserves, and these are dedicated by the state government under our National Parks and Wildlife Act, and they provide the highest level of protection for land in New South Wales, they restrict the development and activities that we can do and the objective for these areas is to be managed for conservation. So if you're a koala be really great to live in one of these areas wouldn't it? Because they're the ones with the highest level of protection and managed for conservation. The problem is that koalas don't understand man-made borders and so they don't always go and sit in our national parks. They can appear on other public land and on private land. So, let's have a look there. We've got state forests which are also public land, they don't have the same level of protection as national parks and they're managed for both timber production and conservation and so in these areas, you can in parts of our state forest you can undertake timber harvesting and there's no outright restrictions on doing that in koala habitat. Instead, what the rules do is they say if you're in these kind of areas then these controls apply and they put in rules around you have to retain a certain number of trees, or you have to look for scats, koala scats, before you log and then retain trees and then in these other areas these controls apply. So, there are additional protections for koalas in some of these areas but there's no outright prohibition. And then there's other types of crown land as well that's managed by local councils or you know our local land services for traveling stock routes and they've got different rules as well, and then we come to private land and again, if you're a koala and you're trying to figure out where the best place to sit is it's a bit complicated because you might be on private land and there's forestry activities regulated on private land. So we talked about forestry and logging on public land, but then there's also a framework a separate framework that regulates native forestry on private land and that sits under our local land services act, it has a separate set of rules for what you can and can't do in, this framework they do identify core koala habitat through mapping and say that you shouldn't log those areas so that's a bit of a higher protection. But then there that's only for core koala habitat and that's a very narrow range of habitat for the rest of the areas, which might be high koala habitat suitability. So might be suitable for koalas they then say similar things like you need to retain a certain number of trees or you need to you know keep this much distance around a tree where you've discovered a scat. Then we've got just tree clearing this. is the type of stuff you know for agriculture or not associated with develop and you might be on rural land in which case you're regulated under the local land services act and what rules apply to you depend on whether you're some kind of routine management activity with a low impact so clearing along a fence line and a lot of the time you can just go ahead. If you're kind of a higher impact activity you might be regulated under the code and the code does try and provide some protection to core koala habitat, but that protection is linked to the koala plans of management that local councils are meant to put in place and as I said only, a handful of councils have those plans in place. So even though the law wants to protect koala habitat in the case of the codebase clearing, it can actually do its job because those councils don't have those plans in place and then if you're a higher impact clearing on rural land you need to get approval from the Native Vegetation Panel. But what if you want to clear trees on urban land? Well, you need to look at the chapter two of the vegetation in non-rural areas step and it has a whole different set of rules around how whether or not you can clear trees on urban land and then we get to development. So, we haven't even started building things yet. So now we're in the planning system, so the environmental planning and protection act and as I said it also distinguishes between rural land and urban land and this is where the koala set comes in because, what it does is it says if you want to do development that's fine, but you have to do these additional assessments for koalas. But what it's done is its split out those requirements for rural land and urban land and it did that a few years ago based on some you know political disputes around what they were going to do with koalas and that distinction is still the case now. So, we've got different laws there depending on whether you're on rural land or urban land, or you could be a major project or infrastructure. In which case you've got a different pathway for approval, and you've got the state government as your consent authority. We do have a biodiversity conservation act in New South Wales which is intended to protect threatened species and this is the act where the koala is listed as endangered but it doesn't trump any of these other provisions, it interacts with them but at the end of the day the Biodiversity Conservation Act doesn't provide absolute protection for threatened species, all it does is signals that when you're considering your tree clearing or your development, you have to consider your impacts on threatened species, but at the end of the day there's quite a bit of discretion for decision makers to still approve development. We've got an offset scheme, and we'll talk about that later. Which in my view is able to facilitate development by allowing proponents to propose offsets and then finally as I said we've got the EPBC Act. Which provides that federal oversight if you're impacting a matter of national environmental significance. So it's no wonder that this little guy is looking quite perplexed because there's a whole range of rules that apply to him but I think the key takeaway messages from this, is that it's complicated, there's not a lot of consistency between the rules, the rules are different depending on where you are and what activity you're undertaking, there's different decision makers there's a lot of discretionary decision- making and no absolute protection and at the end of the day none of the laws say that you can't actually go ahead and clear koala habitat. I’ll leave it there Georgia we can dive into some of the issues in a bit more detail after the next clip. Okay great. It is overwhelmingly complicated that's why we need Sarah here to cut through a little bit but for those people who've seen the film, they will understand well the story started in southwest Sydney and it started in looking at a project called Mount Gilead which was in historic farmland on the outskirts of Sydney Campbell Town, in a place where a very precious koala colony was actually traversing between two rivers, the Nepean and the George's river. And that colony has been expanding is healthy and disease-free and turns out to be one of our repositories of koala genetics in New South Wales that is the most promising, for a species that's in decline. And at the time, post fires when we started making this film that colony started entered into a crisis through the development, priority development zone that's going on there, and that links to the state significant development kind of regulations that Cerin spoke about, a plan for 50,000 houses that is between Campbell Town and Appen and extending now out towards Wilton. So, we'll look at that clip please Crystal and it's called clip one I think, no, clip two corridors that's the one. It explains a bit better. [Music] So at the first point there was the saying that there were no koalas at all on the site, so we didn't have to worry about it. Later they were found that there was actually scats you know on Gilead showing that there was obviously using the major old paddock trees which are now being removed and the basically the department of planning put together a conclusion that said exactly what Lend Lease had said was that the koalas were not using this as an east west and if they were, then we have to remove koalas from this east west corridors, between Georgia's and the Nepean River. Okay so I my motion states that a report and briefing be presented in council chambers to councillors. That includes a presentation on the koala plan of management, a presentation from the chief scientist and engineer on their findings relating specifically to the Campbell Town Koala colony and that as part of that motion that council organizes a site inspection of koala habitat for any counsellors interested. Whatever LendLease has put in front of them was like oh yeah that looks amazing and then it was just sort of passed. So, I mean we were sick to death of that sort of stuff happening. This is the Lendlease’s area, is the dark area that they're going to put aside for koalas and the light green area shows you what's required under the chief scientist report and the camel koala planer management. And we can see that these dark areas are skinny they're nowhere near the width that's required, and they're also fragmented and the most important area around here with Menangle Creek they don't even bother making sure it's connected at all. There is no way koalas can survive this landscape, they will not be able to cross this area and then Lendlease reckons that this meets the chief scientist report, they also say it meets the Campbell Town Koala Plan of management.

 

So, this Woodhouse Creek here goes into Gilead, so it starts in Gulpa, and it goes all the way into Gilead, most of Woodhouse Creek is in Gilead. So, this one if they don't get smashed on road then you're crossing it and that's why we need safe passage.

 

So just before Cerin starts that last little bit with the characters standing in the bush land is adjacent land to Mount Gilead and it's what is called an offset and Cerin over to your corridors and offset.

 

Oh, you're on mute just unmute yourself. Oh, thank you I’m just talking to myself, thank you. What I was saying is I find that clip really interesting where Soul shows us the map and you can see the dark green areas which are the bits that are protected as corridors and the light green areas which are actually the bits that the chief scientist recommended, need to be protected as corridors, in order for those populations to be able to move around in that landscape, you know and thrive and be able to you know survive and by cutting off those corridors and fragmenting the landscape, then we're really you know driving those koalas into further decline because they're not able to you know breed, there's concerns about you know territorial males. So, you really need to maintain those corridors in the landscape. So, what I would say about this is people keep asking well “why don't they just do what the chief scientist said?”. So, the chief scientist advice is just that it's just advice and there's no legal requirement for the government to actually make lawful decisions based on that advice, but what advice like that can do is that it can inform good decision- making. And this example highlights some of the problems with our planning system, we don't do upfront strategic planning very well. By taking advice like that, looking at the landscape as a whole and actually setting aside the areas that need to be conserved you know using appropriate tools whether it's like a land use zone or a national park or some other kind of prohibition and identifying the areas which are more suitable for development. What our planning system really does is it tends to assess development on a case-by-case basis. Which is a really bad way of managing cumulative impacts because I might be thinking about my site here my Gilead development and okay it's only clearing you know it's only affecting this little patch but I'm not thinking about the broader landscape and the fact that this little patch that I might be impacting sits within a bigger corridor that needs to be protected. And our planning system doesn't allow that the bigger landscape scale assessment as easily or the consideration of cumulative impacts within the landscape as easily. But there are processes where you can do that type of strategic assessment up front and protect those corridors and in this area of southwest Sydney where Soul and was walking in the clip the Cumberland plane woodland area there is a Cumberland plane conservation plan that was put in place to do this exact thing it was intended to identify the areas within the Cumberland Plane area that needed to be set aside for conservation or protected and those areas that were more suitable for development because the government does, you know want to build houses put housing somewhere. So by doing this upfront strategic plan it can look at the landscape and figure out where the houses should go and the areas that it shouldn't go and the chief scientist advice was meant to feed into that process but for some reason we got those smaller dark green patches and not the wider green patches that are needed but because that strategic plan was assessed upfront, what it actually does in our system is it then turns off the case by case biodiversity assessment so that it's really hard for communities to now go back and say well actually, when you're assessing this individual development you do need to consider you know a wider corridor, because our system says oh well we don't need to consider biodiversity impacts now because we've already done that up front. When it's not done well up front that leads to this problem where you know when you're looking at on a case-by-case basis you can't actually then consider the biodiversity impacts. So, what we've got is we've got communities in southwest Sydney still fighting to protect those corridors in a legal system that's really not giving them the tools that they need to put in place those proper protections for those corridors. Can I ask a question on that? Just because I was sort of, I guess immersed in that story over four years. The Koala plan of management that was written for Campbell Town Council was written by a very senior ecologist called Steve Phillips it's considered one of the best in the state when someone like Elizabeth Farrelly read it she said it’s great you know what's the matter with that plan it seems very fair and there's signs all over Campbell Town saying you know welcome to Koala Town and everything looks great on paper, but as the story of Saul and his safe city koala group you know showed. The koala planer management was unenforceable different sides of government in the local council didn't make a difference at all and Steve Phillips is now a very frustrated you know retiring ecologist who's just angry as hell basically that 30 years of advising government on this issue and the underpasses haven't been built, the corridors have been narrowed, so it's like the DA process whittles away the good things as our friend Mark Gerard said. Whittles away the things that were in the first plan that sounded good they're gone from the next draft plan and even going to court can't reinstate those things that were there as good intention for mitigating you know impacts on koalas. Can you speak a little bit about the that process which is a bit seems to me a bit like deck chairs on the Titanic if you hire senior ecologists and they advise council and they publish a report and so on and then it's not enforceable, you know, at any level. I guess the question that comes to mind, and I don't have the details on hand is the koala plan of management really only applies to certain types of development and doesn't necessarily apply to state significant development or infrastructure. So, it might have been the case that some of these proposals went through a different pathway where the koala plan of management had no role to play there. Which is you know I guess that goes to the point talked about earlier about the different levels of government and the different pathways and processes. It's kind of hard to know in the abstract but yeah, I guess it would depend yeah where what this development was and where it was sitting in the in the framework. It is a shame because that koala plan of management in Campbell Town is pointed to as a really good example of the framework working in that the state government said we should have you know we want councils to turn their mind to koala protection, make these koala plans of management, the Campbell Town Council did that and it's got planning controls in that in that plan of management that you know talk about retaining certain food trees in the landscape about speed limits, about fences, around swimming pools, all these great thing, but if it's not being applied in practice then again it's another it's another example of what of the system failing we really need to go back in and say, you know what first of all why aren't these councils making these plans? And second of all once they've made them why isn't why isn't it applying to all developments? Yeah okay so we had one more point which we only have time for a very quick answer on which was offsets and that bit of bush where Saul's walking with Elizabeth, was considered an offset for the land clearing that happened on Gilead but the land was actually already in the public ownership and it was not Lendlease’s land to trade, you know what is the what is the mechanism of offsets within this legal kind of world of development planning and koala plans for management. Now I know you said we don't have a lot of time for this I could speak all day about offsets, Georgia, but essentially offsets are a mechanism that are used to compensate for any negative environmental impacts you're going to have. So if you've got development and you're going to have an impact then you can propose offsetting that impact by protecting something else and it's offsetting become a really prevalent feature of our planning and development laws in New South Wales and across Australia because it's seen as a way for governments and proponents to allow development to continue while being seen to you know also look out for the environment. It's okay we can clear this koala habitat here because we're protecting this koala habitat over there. The problem is that over the years our biodiversity frameworks have been weakened so when they were first introduced you had to do like for like offsettings that's kind of the principle that was kind of held up. Which meant that if you were clearing you know these mature trees over here that were a certain type of koala feed tree for example, your offset had to also be that that type of landscape it had to be those types of koala trees feed trees, so you were replacing what you lost with the same. Like for like. The problem is that over time our laws have been weakened so now there's variation rules in our offset scheme which allows you to move away from that strict like for like. You can sometimes just do research instead of your like for like offset or you might be a be allowed to offset with a different species that might have a higher threat status like it might be critically endangered and it's great that you know we might want to take action to protect that species but it's not actually compensating for the loss over here, where what you've just…. And it may not be palatable for koalas it may not be koala food. Okay we probably should move on to the next clip and see if we got time to come back to this. I’m just conscious of the clock, Crystal, can we see the next clip please?

 

Australia is the only developed rich nation on a shame list of deforestation fronts globally. We do not have the reasons that other nations like Brazil or Indonesia or Congo: have poverty lack of rule of law, weak laws, overpopulation we must do better we can do better so we can save koalas and our forests and greater gliders and all the other animals that live in our forests.

 

The Great Koala National Park is really about protecting the nationally significant habitat and koala populations so that's what we're really trying to do here, and this will be an iconic park for the mid north coast. So, in the leadup to the election. the ALP promised to establish a great koala national park. So, we actually have areas such as Nuri State Forest here, we have areas like Pine Creek that are up here, we actually have Nambucca State Forest here and we have areas like Tamban that are down here, and all of these areas are where the state forests are currently targeting the logging of koala habitat. Forestry Corporation is a state government corporation, it's a business and so what they are supposed to be doing is giving a return to the state government. They're going for the native forests, the most important core koala habitat. Forestry can do very much what they want and there's nothing to stop them, even if they kill endangered and threatened species and remember koalas are now endangered. So, you may wonder why koalas are actually under threat well it's areas like this which the forestry corporation are actually logging and removing the habitat for koalas this is the heart of the proposed Great Koala National Park, and the government really needs to act.

 

Okay I'm conscious that the clips are taking up time as well, but we don't have to play another forests one. But I know that the story is about logging on state forest land, and I guess many people like I did, once thought that state forests were like national parks, but I've learned since that state forests are actually resources that can be logged or mined. So, you were going to speak on this point about reforming biodiversity laws to enable us to protect critical koala habitat and I think one of the statistics in the next clip is that only 5% of that forest has been deemed critical for koalas so the rest is open to be logged. Over to you Cerin, to make sense of the failure. I'll make a couple of quick points here Georgia. First is that the rules are allowing this to happen, so it highlights the need for law reform if this is what our laws are allowing us to do then we need to change the laws. The Great Koala National Park we're waiting for the government to finally announce where it's going to set that up should be any day now hopefully but once declared it will provide protection for those areas but then what about the rest of the state forests throughout the rest of New South Wales? We really need to turn our minds to whether we need to go in and change our forestry laws and change the way we manage our forests and then as I mentioned at the start, koalas don't stay in one spot we need to go into all those other laws that I talked about at the start and also figure out what we need to do there because we can't declare every part of the state a national park. So, it's great that we're doing the Great Koala National Park I’m really looking forward to that happening, but we also need to go in and fix the other laws as well. Okay so the Great Koala National Park was promised by this government. I heard it promised by the previous government which was a different colour. It's actually as I understand it forestry who's designated which land will be made into national park and I do understand that they're logging those areas prior to visiting the national park. So it seems incredibly cynical and it throws us to really the question of the EPBC act at the federal level and why federal laws cannot assist us in protecting habitat that is critical to koalas and other animals because clearly the animals can't live on a McDonald's voucher with an Uber account and move from you know patch to patch they need a connectivity of landscape that they can live in a palatable trees and you know the complexity they require of the landscape. EPBC act. Yeah, again another topic I could talk a lot about. So, this is our federal laws where you need to apply to for the Commonwealth for approval if you're going to have a significant impact on a matter of national environmental significance. Just quickly on forestry issues, there's actually a carve out in the EPBC act which means that the government has done one of those kind of strategic assessments and said we'll put in place these regional forest agreements and rules around forestry as kind of a blanket approval and then from there on in you know we don't need to assess forestry on a case by case basis. So, in the case of you know the logging here in New South Wales that would be regulated under that regional forest agreement, and they wouldn't need to go back to the EPBC act every time they were undertaking forestry operations. But just more generally, there was a review of the EPBC act, it was five years ago now, I always say a recent review, but it's been five years, but basically what that review found was that the EPBC act is outdated and requires fundamental reform. And the Labor government when it came in committed to do that reform and has spent the last three years putting forward its proposal for reform it had its nature positive plan which is how it was going to do things, it was going to introduce national environmental standards including standards for threatened species and koalas, it was going to introduce a new framework for regional planning, which would be that process of identifying the conservation areas and protecting them and the other areas for development it was going to strengthen our threatened species listing process and recovery planning, it was going to bring in a new national environment protection agency to boost our enforcement of those laws, but what happened at the end of last year is the government had stage two of those reforms in the parliament, but it didn't it didn't go ahead. So, for whatever reason there's a lot of reporting about the politics on this I’ll let you go back and read those articles, but the government made the decision not to proceed with those laws and actually took them off the Parliament papers. So we've got nowhere with that reform process despite stakeholders including EDO engaging with government over the last three years around those laws and then I don't know if you wanted to show the clip about the … Yeah let let's throw to that what happened last week please, Crystal we might not play it all, but we'll just have a quick look at the YouTube clip. Please Crystal. That's on salmon farming? Yeah. This was an announcement only last week and Cerin might explain its significance. It's the issue the federal government is desperate to neutralize. Fish farms out NOW! But while its latest move might win over those on the west coast, in the state's capital opposition to salmon farming only seems to be growing. The Greens are going to stand with local communities and we're going to fight this on the beaches and we're going to go to Canberra next week and we will fight this every step of the way in the parliament.

 

As pieces of salmon and fish oil washed up on beaches in the state southeast over the past few weeks, the Albanese government was nowhere to be found. Now it's jumped into action, much to the displeasure of environmentalists. Next week in Canberra the prime minister is going to rush through legislation to protect this industry and to protect his corporate mates in the salmon industry. Those changes were flagged last month, it's still unclear exactly what they'll involve. Time for Cerin can tell us the significance of what was done. Yeah, so with regard to a critically endangered gate which is like a ray or a shark that same family and they exist nowhere else in the world except in that one bay. So, we've got these laws, intended to protect our matters of national environmental significance. As Georgia just said we're talking about this Majean which is a critically endangered species under our federal laws, it only exists in Macquarie Harbour that's been impacted by this development down there. What the current laws allow is for someone to ask the minister to reconsider decisions under the act, where there's new information or new impacts and say to the minister can you please remake the decision about whether this is something that needs to be assessed and approved under the commonwealth legislation. So instead of doing their nature positive law reform last year, that all fell down, but what the government did do instead last week was rush through these laws that changed that process which meant that in limited circumstances the minister was no longer able to reconsider decisions and the idea around that was that certain industries that might have been operating for a certain amount of time even if new information came to light would no longer have access to that process of having a reconsideration made. And so as the reporting shows there, it was a response to the concerns from the salmon industry about a request that had been made for the minister to reconsider whether the EPBC act needed to apply to that particular development. And so what essentially it does is it removes oversight for the federal government instead of bolstering it like the review said we needed you know stronger reforms what it's actually done is said well in these circumstances we're actually going to you know remove that oversight it's not needed and we're talking about a critically endangered species, so if we can't protect it you know what about all the other species on the list as well? It seems to me we're going to open to questions now but when the state or the federal government declare state significant economic activities like salmon farming, they throw out the environment protection laws that we were seeking to strengthen so it makes a nonsense in a way of the very environment protection laws, surely. But I think we have a moderator coming on to assist us with some Q&As's and we're running out of time to keep on. I’m sure Sarah and I could go all night. And we you do have another key point to come back to if we have time. Where is our moderator? I’m sure a lot of our students would really appreciate you going on all night very interesting discussions being had at the moment but yeah, I will open up the floor to questions today viewers can pop those questions in our chat or raise their hands and pop your camera on to share that with us.

 

And do you have any questions yourself for us thus far I do have a few but I'll hand that one over to Costa first to share his.

 

You want to read it out if it's in the chat? Uh my question is just what part does litigation play how big or small a part? Is there any opportunity in taking someone to court or is it just that the laws are so weak that no law is being broken so there's no actual opportunity there? Oh, if I have a quick go at that and then Cerin. The story about Southwest Sydney was a legal case that was mounted in the land environment court but the case went on and a large amount of money was spent by a very small group and Lend Lease and the government joined forces in their legal defence and had a huge cohort of lawyers and the only grounds for objection were the grounds of the development approval so there were no sort of moral grounds about extinction or about koalas or any other thing that could be applied so it was only the koala mechanisms within the DA within that council's regulation. So, I've seen this before with development plants it makes it too narrow really for the applicants to win. Cerin? Yeah, thanks Georgia yeah litigation and going to court is a pathway if there's been a breach, but I think you also made the good point there Costa, that you know a lot of the times a lot of these activities are within the scope of the law so it's actually the laws are too weak. And the other point I would make is that there's a lot of discretion in the system and it allows you to weigh things up. So being able to show that a decision was the wrong decision is very hard when the system doesn't have clear objective criteria that you need to meet, but allows you to do that weighing up because you know how do you show a decision's wrong when you've got that amount of discretion as a decision maker? Thanks that's a bummer but thank you. Very interesting I might give some of our students a bit more time to think and so while they're thinking, I will ask on that point of law reform, I think I am personally a bit curious about like what would the ideal legal frameworks look like in in protecting koalas and protecting our environment? Like in your personal opinions how harsh or how strict should we go to make sure that we're properly protecting our biodiversity in this country? That is a good question Declan, and I believe that you will have or will have access to a report that we've written that answers that very question. So it looks at protecting koalas in the Sydney Basin Bio region, which is you know just the area we're looking at but it applies to laws all across the state and it looks at each of those different approval pathways that I talked about at the start and says how they need to be strengthened but I think there's kind of a few take home messages for me like to keep it really high level. One we need to actually identify the areas that we want to protect. So what are those high value areas? Because at the moment they people do it in all different ways and there's no consistency and we really need to just identify it. Then the next thing we need to do is protect it because there's no point identifying it if it's not then linked to some kind of regulatory reform. So, you either need to in the case of your most valuable areas at some point we're just going to have to you know put in place the mechanisms that say you just can't do impacting activities there. Or there's other ways that the legal system can kind of tighten up the controls around that development. So, it's identify it and actually protect it and then the last thing is we've actually got really positive incentives and mechanisms in our framework such as a private land conservation agreements where a private land holder can sign up to protect their land and they've then got access to government funding to maintain that land for conservation. So, we've got those mechanisms as well that we can use to encourage landholders to conserve land. So, I think it's a bit of all three. We need to figure out what it is we need to protect because at the moment it's a bit of a hodge podge, we need to strengthen the laws to make sure that it's providing the protections for those areas, and then we need to use those other incentives that we've got in place to make sure that conservation is something that people want to do on their land. Beautiful I am also getting privately messaged a question, so I'll read that out for us as well. But I've been asked, what can the average person do when approaching these issues? Is it a matter of putting our vote where our mouth is or is placing greater scrutiny on council or local representatives also an option? I will say obviously we have sort of discussed placing all these pressures on a high-level areas of government and obviously it does seem to be a bit of a bipartisan failure there in these areas but yeah, I think you know what can the average student do to maybe support this cause. Georgie you're on mute this time. Yes. If I could answer just in as from the producer of the film or filmmaker point of view. I think you have to do both and everything that's in your power. So, writing to your representatives is really helpful especially if you might be in a marginal seat. I personally think voting for minority parties and independents and again getting an undertaking from those candidates about what they will do for koalas and for habitat and threatened species locally, but then so there's campaigning direct to the councillors and putting pressure on them because they are vulnerable to pressure as are people in marginal seats, as compared the minister or the prime minister who are not very open to pressure from letters and individuals. So, I think the more local your actions. the better. Cerin thoughts? I agree with all of that, and I would add if you're a policy nerd like me the New South Wales government is actually, has committed to fix our biodiversity conservation laws here in New South Wales and that reform process is happening now. So, they have they've done a first round of changes to the offset scheme, but they've commissioned the natural resources commission to look at our land clearing framework. I'm probably jumping in to that last slide we didn't have time for Georgia but they've commissioned the natural resources commission to look at our land clearing framework and make recommendations for protecting enhancing that and they have committed to reform the biodiversity conservation act and look at how it intersects with other acts and that reform process will be happening across the year and there will be opportunities for public consultation on that reform process. So, if you're someone who likes you know reading the detail and getting involved then that's another opportunity as well not for the faint-hearted though reading 150 pages of you know draft legislation.

 

I’ll pass it over to Anthea. Thanks so much Declan and thank you both for your presentations I had a couple of questions. I love the kind of idea that the koalas don't know where the lines are in all of this environmental planning, it really forces us to get out of that mode of thinking about land and our environment in this highly legal and kind of statutory and legislated way and relate to the land on its own terms. And I was wondering, it made me think you know the koalas also don't know what's federal land and what's state land and so and of course as all of the students here will know that those classifications are concurrent has there been any attempt at kind of harmonization at state and federal level? I know we're talking about New South Wales, but it seems like this has this is such a national issue and so it's kind of it's you know it speaks to the absurdity of the ways in which we think about planning as versus conservation that some of those conversations may not be happening. And then I had another question about like the singling out of the koalas like it's interesting to think about the koalas in the context of greater biodiversity and how that has played out as a political strategy and I guess who are the koala's allies in some of these fights so when we think about biodiversity more generally where do some of the other aspects of environmental planning and advocacy kind of come in to join forces with the moves to protect the koalas? Well just quickly we found that we chose koalas as low hanging fruit. We felt that globally they're loved, children love them, they're one of the five most recognizable animals by children globally. We just felt and that they're not you know predators on anything else except gum leaves. The question really is what harm were they doing that we were going to evict them and let them go extinct on our watch and so they are the ambassadors for all the other animals that live in those same ecological niches and a lot of them are much less known. You know greater gliders, sugar gliders black cockatoos and so on. So, we originally called the film ‘the koala corridor’ and then it became ‘the koalas as sort of ambassadors’ and then it became that they were representatives of those other animals and we have many allies in environment groups in universities ecologists, land care, animal rescue those incredible animal rescuers in the film. the wires people. But also, the scientists, the geneticists, the people studying leaf ecology, they're all completely on the same page with regard to the need to protect koalas. As are some private land holders and I think that you know they're an army but they're not really knowing how to unify. You know we're trying to use the film to unify everyone to the call to understand that nature is at stake here and you know we're looking. I think the quote by Bob Brown is ‘if we can't save koalas can we save ourselves you know nature's that important?’.

 

So, that's my answer. Thank you, I know we're coming to time, but maybe just a brief comment on that kind of state federal collaboration Cerin and then Declan we could probably hand over to Alexis as we draw to 7:00. Yeah happy. That was a great answer Georgia because I think all the law reform recommendations that we're making, are really about strengthening protections for threatened species as a whole and yes, they're framed as koala in you know as part of this film. But they will have impacts for threatened species and biodiversity more broadly. In terms of that intersection of state and federal there's been some attempts to kind of marry things up. So, some examples are the governments all agreed to a common method for listing and assessing species as threatened. So now all jurisdictions use the same criteria. Which is a starting point and the same categories of listing and there's streamline assessment, so if you're listed at the state level you can be listed more quickly at the federal level. So that's one area where there's some uniformity in the law, as someone who you know who looks at laws all across Australia, it is quite frustrating how different the laws are. I recently did an analysis of land clearing laws in New South Wales sorry across Australia and the jurisdictions are so different and in other areas of laws you know we've got uniform evidence laws we've got uniform other laws. Why are our environment laws so different? Speaking about boundaries again koalas or whatever threatened species don't know the difference between New South Wales and Victoria. Why are we doing this or why are we reinventing the wheel I guess? When there's probably best practice ways of doing things. The other thing I would say is that the review of the federal laws recommended that we have national environmental standards and that would be one way of bringing more of that uniformity, would be having the federal government set those national environmental standards and then requiring state and territories to, in order to kind of streamline their assessment processes, match those standards at the federal level. So that would be another way of doing it. And then another example is the states through this federal reform process, the federal government was working with the states on regional planning and that was working together to do that upfront planning and trying to figure out you know the areas that should be protected the conservation areas that were more suitable for development and doing that jointly between the federal government and the state government provided another opportunity to align the assessment processes and the thinking about which areas you know should be developed and which should be conserved. Wonderful I am quite conscious of time but before I pass over to Alexis. Georgia the point about protecting Koala IP I thought was quite interesting I think it might be worth sharing it just before we finish up here. Okay so I just wrote that I've been interested, and I spoke to Cerin about this when I first met her about the idea of copyright or moral rights or IP being afforded to threatened species. So, where the koalas could actually have a legal defence, and we could pursue all the people who profit from the image of the koala cuddle koalas put them on t-shirts and branding and baby change tables and get profits from those uses of the image of the koala to go towards the koala campaign to save the species. That is a question it's a bigger question for legal eagles really about whether there is a precedent in New Zealand where a river was afforded rights, and I think South America has some precedent thoughts on that from anyone?

 

Anthea? Absolutely not an IP lawyer. I love it, I love the idea as the koala prosecuting its own its own rights and the way in which its image is used, and we have a great IP concentration here at UTS law. So, I will raise this in the staff room when I see all of my colleagues but yeah, I love I love the broad thinking, Georgia. Wonderful you’ve definitely given all of us a lot to think. About, sorry Costa before I pass over. Ah just one thing with the rights given to rivers in New Zealand and there's rights here you know the constitution in Bolivia and Ecuador. They are really great I don't know if any of them have been extended to intellectual property and what's really interesting is we've given rights to things like rivers etc but still the rights to animals is still like treated very separately to it. And there's very much a thing of like because we're giving missing rights doesn't mean it has the same rights as a person, you know what I mean? So, but it'll be interesting to look at it from an IP perspective, that sounds like a wonderful. I'm just very interested in the Peter Singer view of personhood and the expanding circle and I really believed and I did a doctorate about environmental theory and I'm really concerned that if we don't change our view of the rights of animals we won't have nature you know we won't have a natural environment so we have to be looking at these things and they're constitutional and foundational I guess. Very interesting. I will pass it over to Alexis one of the members of our justice action committee, who with the here with the social justice portfolio, the LSS to conclude us for today. Perfect thank you Declan. So, on behalf of the UTS faculty of law and the UTS law student society I would like to express our sincere gratitude to Dr Georgia Wallace-Crabbe and Cerin Loane for generously taking the time to share their expertise and insights with us this evening. Your contributions to environmental advocacy through film and policy have illuminated the ongoing challenges to koala conservation and ultimately broader biodiversity. Particularly in how you know these inconsistencies in regulations and the significant discretion in their enforcement continue to undermine their protection we have been incredibly fortunate to hear your perspectives and I know I speak for all attendees when I say that this discussion has been both thought provoking and inspiring and as aspiring future legal professionals ourselves we are very grateful for the opportunity to engage with such critical issues and then to learn from your dedication to driving real world change. I would also like to extend my thanks to Anthea, Crystal, Zavan, Chloe, Mayan and Declan. along with the entirety of the Brennan and social justice team for their efforts in organizing and facilitating tonight's event. Your work continues to ensure that discussions like this continue to engage and empower our UTS law community and to our attendees your participation is invaluable, and we hope that tonight's discussion will serve as a catalyst for further engagement and reflection in social justice and the Brennan program. Just a reminder that you'll all automatically receive your five ROJ points for attending this evening's event and then we would also encourage all of you here today to engage with this topic through further reading and you can have reflect upon this for additional ROJ points by submitting 350 words to career hub. Just looking ahead we invite you to continue these vital conversations at our upcoming Brennan Justice Talk which will be a special 360 immersive video experiencing which will examine Australia's immigration detention regime and that will be in the UTS starter arena on Tuesday 13th of May at around lunch but just keep an eye out for an email from the Brennan team with further details so once again thank you to all of our incredible guests for their commitment to environmental and social justice and thank you all for attending and we look forward to seeing you all at future events.