Save Our Koalas!
Transcript
Date: 3 July 2024
Ms WARE (Hughes): Koalas are an iconic but endangered Australian native. I have healthy colonies of koalas living in my electorate of Hughes, in Heathcote National Park and around Sandy Point. However, about 10 per cent of these koalas are being killed each year on Heathcote Road, and the government response on this has been nothing but Utopia. The koalas cross Heathcote Road in mating season, and this season is about to begin again in September. The solution is simple: we need a fence urgently built around Deadmans Creek. This will prevent the koalas from crossing the road. They can then cross under the creek. I have written to the federal government, the Minister for the Environment and Water and the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, and what have they done? They have kicked the can down the road and said it's the New South Wales government. I have now written to the Premier of New South Wales, as well as the New South Wales department of transport, calling on them to simply put into practice a report that has been sitting on the desk of the department of transport now since 2001. It is not an expensive spend at this stage; we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, not hundreds of millions of dollars. So I call on the state and federal governments to urgently fund this project to keep our koalas safe into the future.