As the Coalition shows its colours on nature, Labor faces a question: will it really protect Australia’s wildlife?

New South Wales’s Bulga state forest, home to koalas and other species such as the greater glider. Photograph: Dean Sewell/Oculi Photos/The Guardian

In an age of monumental political shifts, the news that the Coalition doesn’t like, and very likely won’t support, Labor’s proposed revamp of national nature law has at least had one thing going for it. It is achingly predictable.

I mean … of course it was going to go this way. Australia’s rightwing parties are a mess, and threatening to tear themselves apart. It’s possible not every Coalition MP dismisses the evidence that the country’s extraordinary and unique environment is in long-term decline. But a significant number do.