Rural
14 August, 2026
Mixed response to Great Southern Forest proposal
The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party has slammed proposals to create a new 365,000-hectare national park in southern NSW.
The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party has slammed proposals to create a new 365,000-hectare national park in southern NSW.
Shooters, Fishers and Farmers MLC Mark Banasiak has described the proposal as ‘obscene.’
The proposed Great Southern Forest National Park would stretch from the Illawarra Region down to the Victoria border.
It would include native forest land stretching into the Southern Highlands including the Meryla, Belanglo, Wingello and Penrose state forests.
Mr Banasiak said the proposed new national park would be one of the largest in Australia and would lock hunters, fishers and four-wheel drivers out of huge tracts of land.
“It is obscene what is being proposed here,” Mr Banasiak said.
“The reality is – and everyone knows the reality – that as soon as the land tenure changes from state forest to national park, all those activities you could do in a national park shrink to nothing,” he said.
Mr Banasiak said the park would become a giant “unmanaged tinderbox” and questioned the ecological benefits of the proposal given that native animals would be ‘torched’ in the event of a bushfire.
The Great Southern Forest National Park is being proposed by the National Parks Association of NSW and would include 55 state forests, 24 flora reserves and 98 NPWS-managed reserves.
The NPA is describing it as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to protect forests, wildlife, rivers and cultural areas that are deeply significant to Aboriginal communities in southern NSW”.
Rather than lock people out, NPA says the proposal would “unlock a wealth of new recreational opportunities” while enhancing existing activities such as mountain biking, camping, fishing, horse riding and bushwalking.
Greens MP and spokesperson for the environment Sue Higginson said the proposal – unveiled late last month – would protect nearly 1.2 million hectares of native forest on public land – an area five times bigger than the Australian Capital Territory.
She said it would become one of the largest connected conservation landscapes in the nation.
“I haven’t seen something this positive for nature since the plan for the Great Koala National Park was first revealed some 16 years ago,” she said.
Ms Higginson said industrial scale logging of public forests on the NSW South Coast was coming to a rapid end.
“Our high value timber products come from plantations, not our native forests,” she said.
“The millions of dollars currently being spent to prop up the native forest logging industry can not be justified any longer.
“It should be redirected and invested in the future of nature protection and public good.”
However Mr Banasiak said regional communities that previously relied on timber couldn’t survive on eco-tourism.
“Eco-tourism is the greatest furphy, I think, that has ever been put forward.
“It’s the most overstated, under-delivered concept ever.”
He encouraged people to get behind the campaign to stop the proposal “otherwise we will see an ever-increasing loss of public land for recreation”.
“We need to be relentless in this fight otherwise we will lose everything,” he said.
The proposal has also attracted plenty of online criticism with one Facebook user saying there wouldn’t be many spots left on the coast for local residents and visitors to enjoy.
“National parks do nothing but lock everything up and let the place go rampant with feral animals and overgrown forests threatening our coastal towns,” he said.
Another said the park would become the “ultimate fire threat from hell”.
“It will not be maintained and it will be allowed to grow so thick you can’t walk through it,” he said.
“Then when the day comes, no-one will be able to stop the inferno.
“Not a case of if, but when.”
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