Labor’s failures on the swift parrot
The easiest way to avoid responsibility for the causes of extinction is not to investigate them.
Why do a federal environmental assessment if it will delay converting the forest where swift parrots are nesting into a shipload of woodchips? Why save the habitat of the Gouldian finch in Northern Territory savanna from being bulldozed into a treeless cotton crop?
In 2025 alone, the Albanese government facilitated the destruction of more than 57,000 hectares of native forests and woodlands in Australia, including the destruction of 7643 hectares of habitat of the endangered northern quoll.
As if eating invasive poisonous cane toads and being eaten by feral cats is not enough, the government-authorised clearing of the quolls’ habitat is a prime factor in pushing it to extinction.
According to Bush Heritage Australia for every 100 hectares of woodlands cleared, some 2000 birds, 15,000 reptiles and 500 mammals are lost.
In 1997, then prime minister John Howard shifted environmental responsibility for logging to the states. The Albanese government has followed this model, devolving environmental responsibility to state and territory governments which, in turn, are easy pickings for resource extraction corporations such as miners, loggers and tourism entrepreneurs.
The swift parrot is anodyne green with red, yellow and blue trim. It nests in Tasmania’s forests in summer and migrates to the mainland for winter. Before white settlement, there were flocks of thousands of swift parrots in Australia and, on the mainland, they ranged from Adelaide to Brisbane. The parrot has a distinctive, high-pitched, staccato call and raises its young in the hollows of trees that need to be more than 100 years old. It is the fastest parrot on Earth and crosses Bass Strait far more quickly than the Spirit of Tasmania.
Research by the Australian National University reveals that in Tasmania, from the year 2000, “the extent of deforestation, disturbance and degradation impacted approximately a quarter of forests in the swift parrot’s breeding range in 20 years. Over the same time period, the swift parrot population has declined from over 2100 birds to less than 500 birds.”
On its current trajectory, there will be 50 to 100 swift parrots left by 2030. The species is projected to become extinct in the wild later in the 2030s, thanks to Howard’s effective death sentence and the series of federal governments, including Albanese’s, that have endorsed his policy ever since.
It will not be the first Australian species driven to extinction by government policy: the thylacine lasted less than 50 years after the Tasmanian parliament legislated a bounty on its head in 1888.
Now, the swift parrot is very high if not top of the list of species being extirpated by forest clearance and by climate change which, in turn, intensifies bushfires.
While Albanese and his environment minister, Murray Watt, featherbed their logging and land-clearing corporate backers, Forestry Tasmania has proceeded with the broadscale destruction of swift parrot nesting trees. Everyone involved understands that if there are fewer nesting trees there are fewer nests and, inevitably, fewer birds.
The flattening of a large coupe of forest in the Wielangta coastal hills east of Hobart this summer was a case in point.
Forestry Tasmania has proceeded with the broadscale destruction of swift parrot nesting trees. Everyone involved understands that if there are fewer nesting trees there are fewer nests and, inevitably, fewer birds.
The Forest Practices Code, the set of rules under which Forestry Tasmania is supposed to operate, requires that logging must cease within 500 metres of any reported swift parrots. Multiple reports, including recordings of the parrots’ distinctive call in the trees, were sent to Forestry Tasmania by Bob Brown Foundation scientists on site. However, they were ignored and the targeted forest was clear-felled.
Forestry Tasmania, with the full backing of state and federal ministers for the environment, breached its own code for protecting this critically endangered bird. Watt was informed but was submissive to the Tasmanian authorities.
On March 31, he wrote to Jenny Weber, the campaign manager at the Bob Brown Foundation: “Under Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs) agreements, state governments are responsible for land use decisions, for ensuring that habitat is protected for the threatened species that live in these areas, and to ensure that any new or altered elements of their systems are developed and implemented to be consistent with relevant Statutory Conservation Planning Documents (that includes the Forest Practices Code).”
Watt continued: “Conservation advices and recovery plans are in place for all threatened species that occur in RFA regions, such as the Greater Glider, Koala and Swift Parrot. Consistent with the RFAs, states are responsible for adapting forest management systems in response to new information such as up-listings, or new science.
“At the end of 2026, the Australian Parliament passed new federal environmental legislation that will remove the long-standing exemption for RFA forestry operations under the EPBC Act. When these reforms commence in mid-2027, forestry operations will be required to meet strengthened national environmental standards where matters of national environmental significance - such as the Swift Parrot - may be affected.”
Let’s not hold our breaths. Watt is saying that, having handed authority to the states, he is not inclined to intervene, even if there is clear evidence that a state is breaching the rules. He is negotiating the new rules with corporate interests rather than frontline environmentalists. On this basis, Australians can expect Canberra to devolve more of its responsibility, on a wide range of environmental issues, to the states and territories.
To highlight this direction, two of Watt’s recent decisions show him refusing to have Commonwealth experts review environmentally damaging projects supported by state and territory administrations. In January, experts at the Environment Centre NT were stunned by Watt’s decision to give Claravale Station, north-west of Katherine, the go-ahead to bulldoze nearly 3000 hectares of tropical savanna without the need for federal assessment.
Claravale had earlier been exonerated by the Northern Territory authorities for having illegally cleared hundreds of hectares of woodlands.
The Claravale cattle station, with a long frontage to the Daly River, is in the heart of the most intact tropical savanna left on Earth. That savanna stretches across northern Queensland, the NT and Western Australia.
According to the Environment Centre NT, Claravale is one of the last strongholds for ghost bats, Gouldian finches, pig-nosed turtles and red goshawks. Bulldozing savanna and the inevitable run-off also threatens the Daly River’s critically endangered freshwater sawfish.
The NT government ticked off on the proposal, but the Environment Centre NT remained sure that, with the consequences being so great, the federal minister for the environment would review and overturn that decision.
In January, Watt decided against a federal assessment. This was true to form: only one other pastoral land-clearing application in the NT has ever been referred for federal assessment under Howard’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, despite more than 250,000 hectares of land clearing being approved in the Territory since 2003.
Research led by Professor Brett Murphy from Charles Darwin University shows that, on average, each area cleared in the NT between 2000 and 2020 overlaps with the modelled distribution of 12 species listed as threatened.
Earlier this month, Watt followed his Claravale handwash by deciding not to review the Tasmanian government’s plan for a multimillion-dollar tourism track and resorts in the heart of the fragile, high-grade Tyndall Range wilderness, north of Queenstown. The plan includes a large lodge and ranger station on the verge of scenic Lake Huntley. It will be wild no more.
The helicopter-serviced lodge will dominate the scene from every angle. The 31 kilometre all-weather walking track and tourist accommodation will not only wreck the Tyndall Range’s wilderness quality, it will injure the pristine vegetation and fauna of this high-rainfall region.
Watt fell in line with the Tasmanian Liberal government’s assurances that it will “minimise” the impacts of this “Next Iconic Walk”.
The state Environmental Impact Statement highlighted risks to significant alpine vegetation, cushion moorlands and glacial landscapes, but Watt scuppered calls from environmentalists for an independent federal assessment.
Wilderness is one of Tasmania’s fastest-disappearing resources. Authentic wilderness – the wild Earth as inhabited by our human forebears: remote, natural country unmarred by the impact of modern infrastructure – is being rapidly eroded by “Next Iconic Walks” designed for transient experiences for a rich, elite clientele.
There are dozens of options on private land for walks and tourist lodges in spectacular country, but why pay for that when public lands of World Heritage value such as the Tyndall Range cost nothing?
Wilderness is priceless. For the Tasmanian government, no member of which has ever lifted a finger to save the Tasmanian wilderness, that means having no price: of no value, until it is exploited or destroyed for monetary gain. Obviously Watt agrees. He has no measure of the loss of wilderness value this project will cause.
On form it is likely that, having used public funds to invade the Tyndall Range with its “Next Iconic Walk”, the state government will pass the infrastructure to private hands.
Up north, Claravale is owned by the Top End Pastoral Company, which bought it for $8.5 million in 2021. The company is controlled by Queensland businessmen Michael Simmich and Clayton Coleman. Claravale is up for sale again, for an estimated $30-40 million.
What a windfall that the sale is now enhanced by the Watt-authorised licence to bulldoze nearly 3000 more hectares of savanna and its wildlife for sorghum or cotton.
The local Wagiman people get nothing in this deal but a lament for the loss of their savanna homeland. Traditional Owner Theresa Banderson says, “This my country. I love this country … ahh! Those trees they are knocking … it makes you cry!”