News
10 September, 2026
National park petition to be presented
A petition to create a new Southern Highlands-Wollondilly National Park will be presented in the Legislative Assembly next week.
A petition to create a new Southern Highlands-Wollondilly National Park will be presented in the Legislative Assembly next week.
Petitioners were advised by email on Tuesday that the petition would be presented in the Legislative Assembly by Member for Wollondilly Judy Hannan on the next sitting day.
Mrs Hannan’s office has confirmed that the next sitting day is Tuesday, September 15.
While there will be no official ‘handover’ of the petition as such – given that it was an electronic petition (or ePetition) – it will be forwarded to Minister for the Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Heritage Penny Sharpe for a response within 35 days.
The ePetition closed with 3733 signatures.
It asks the Legislative Assembly to call on the NSW Government to establish a new national park encompassing the existing fragmented National Park and Crown Lands around the Bargo River Gorge in the north, Mount Alexandra in the south of the Wollondilly electorate and then further south towards Morton National Park in the Goulburn electorate.
It also calls on the Government to affirm that the proposal to establish the Southern Highlands-Wollondilly National Park meets National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) acquisition criteria, “including vision to improve the comprehensiveness, catchment protection, ecosystem function and landscape connectivity across Wollondilly electorate”.
Mrs Hannan has been consistently calling for the creation of a new national park since her election to Parliament in March 2023.
She has received the backing of the Southern Highlands Wildlife Sanctuary, with the sanctuary’s executive director Peter Lewis launching the ePetition in June.
Mrs Hannan said the time for action was now.
“Without action, the lands surrounding national parks will be left in fragmented Crown land management with no investment or protection of the unique bushland corridors to protect cultural heritage and vulnerable flora and fauna,” she said.
The fauna includes “disease-free koalas”.
“Animals know no boundaries that we studiously keep on our computers (and) that ultimately mean nothing,” Mrs Hannan said in a Private Member’s Statement more than two years ago.
“If a koala can travel hypothetically through all of these lands, should we not treat them all the same and protect them for all of us to enjoy?
“Do we seriously think the koala will care if it’s in a parcel of land under assessment of a government agency?”
Mrs Hannan said at the time that she had raised the proposal with the Minister, but Mrs Sharpe has “disappointingly shown no imagination here for what we could do”.
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