‘Just a disgrace’: experts condemn NSW use of public land to offset huge housing expansion

The Perrottet government will use land that has already been bought with public funds and put aside for conservation to offset yet more clearing of endangered bushland for new housing developments in western Sydney.

The president of the National Parks Association of NSW, Grahame Douglas, says it is a "betrayal of public trust".

"This is[a] double dip," he said. "They don't want to admit to it, but that's exactly what they're doing."

The government announced last year it had approved the Cumberland Plain conservation plan (CPCP), a major planning policy that will guide the development of four new urban growth areas and up to 73,000 houses from Penrith to Wilton over 35 years.

To compensate for the destruction of koala habitat and some of Sydney's rarest bushland, the state has committed to environmental offsets, including a new Georges River koala reserve in the local government areas of Campbelltown and Wollondilly. The proposed reserve would be up to 1,830 hectares.

The government plans to establish conservation agreements on much of this land in order to generate biodiversity offset credits. The government would then buy those credits using levies paid by developers to fund the new reserve's ongoing management.

But, as the CPCP itself states, most of this future reserve was already in state government ownership.

Douglas was a public servant working for the NSW planning department in the 1980s in the team responsible for assessing lands to be acquired for regional open space amid expansion of housing in suburbs including Campbelltown and Camden.

At the time, a formal environmental offsets scheme did not exist but clearing was to be compensated for through the establishment of conservation areas and regional open spaces. Sydney councils collected money from ratepayers for a fund the state government used to buy land for community purposes such as hospitals, roads, schools and conservation.

Douglas worked in the planning department's Campbelltown office and his role included assessing sites as part of a valuation process before they were bought by the department.

He said that acquisition program bought about 2,000 hectares along the Georges River for conservation, bringing the total public lands available for conservation in that area to about 2,400 hectares.

This includes most of the land the state government now plans to use to establish its koala reserve and contribute to the offset requirements for developments such as new housing estates in Appin.

Douglas said it was another example of what is referred to as "double dipping" on offsets, where lands already intended for conservation are traded again for the same purpose and to facilitate more clearing.

Similar concerns were raised about the main offset for the western Sydney airport.

Douglas said the restoration and management of the Georges River lands that would be funded through the developer levies was work that should have already been occurring for decades.

"It's just a disgrace," he said. "The real travesty is the [offsets] system was touted as being no net loss. But the system continues to lead to loss of biodiversity. It's just terrible."

Under the CPCP, which still requires signoff by the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, developers would receive their environmental approval upfront.

The promised conservation components of the plan would be established gradually. The plan states the koala reserve would be protected in stages, with completion around 2040.

Julie Sheppard, the secretary of the Macarthur branch of the National Parks Association, said this was unsatisfactory.

"When they say they're going to do it in piecemeal fashion, you can imagine how drawn out and ineffective that will be in an overall plan," she said.

"It needs to be a dedication of land for that purpose from the start, with a plan of management and the whole thing working holistically."

Sheppard has campaigned for 4o years to protect the area and worked with Douglas on a proposal in the 80s to establish a reserve with all of the Georges River lands that had been acquired for regional open space.

She said Sydney's koalas, as a healthy and expanding population, were "just so important".

"All the development that's going on at such a pace and what's proposed in the CPCP, you just wonder how anything is going to survive," she said.

Guardian Australia sent questions to the state's planning minister, Anthony Roberts, the environment minister, James Griffin, and the Department of Planning and Environment.

A statement was sent via the department rejecting Douglas's assertion that the government had "double dipped" on earlier conservation requirements, noting no formal offset process existed at the time the land was acquired.

"The establishment of the proposed Georges River koala reserve is in addition to any existing biodiversity offset obligations and will be managed by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service as part of the national park estate," a spokesperson said.

They said additional land for the reserve would be acquired by the Office of Strategic Lands and there would be annual monitoring and a five-yearly independent review to ensure the CPCP was meeting its conservation requirements.