At the tree of knowledge in town it proudly displays the motto, Freedom Without Dishonour.

We have endured for two years, floods, bushfires, and a pandemic that have left many people experiencing mental health issues.

Now the energy crisis and the increase in the cost of living have further impacted on our health, however, just as we had started healing from those disasters, the members of the AWU have shown a blatant contempt for us, the public, whose lives have been further disrupted by their actions.

There is nothing honorable about their behaviour. Shame on them!

Mandating vehicle emission standards will be a sensible move for the Labor government to take.

From the climate perspective, this will help accelerate the uptake of electric vehicles to enable the Labor government to meet its 2030 climate change goals.

The health benefits are significant too; higher levels of air pollution have been linked to increased heart and lung problems, and increased mortality.

Fewer petrol cars on our roads will reduce air pollution and improve health outcomes for the general population.

Any policy that will not only help us achieve our climate goals, but also reduce the burden on our overloaded public health system is simply a win-win policy.

While the NSW Threatened Species Scientific Committee's (TSSC) listing of koalas as endangered in NSW was anticipated, the threats to koalas at a state level should not be applied to, or confused with those the TSSC has specified for this bioregion.

In its 2007 final determination to reject an endangered listing for South Coast koalas, the TSSC acknowledged koalas "...are threatened by ongoing degradation in the quality of their habitat because of extensive canopy dieback, clearing due to rural residential development and commercial forest harvesting. Further measures are needed to mitigate these threatening processes and provide for the recovery of this iconic species in south-east NSW and elsewhere in its range."

The vague Koala Action Network (KAN) suggestion that "climate change, loss of habitat and fragmentations have had a serious impact" is consistent with NSW government's endless efforts to ignore the ongoing threats and the management required to mitigate them.

This is particularly the case for extensive forest dieback, because understanding this phenomena explains why the Australian Koala Foundation says there are only 175-250 koalas in Eden-Monaro even though 61.6 per cent of original koala habitat remains.

The AKF's advice that koalas need "cooperation between state agencies and private landholders interested in protecting biodiversity" has much merit. Unfortunately it is apparent that like state agencies the secretive and unresponsive KAN does not support cross tenure forest management for koalas, has rejected credible local environmental science and seemingly doesn't mind suppressing information.

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