That’s the spin. But many are unpersuaded. Investor Australian Ethical, for example, supports other Lendlease projects but rejects Figtree Hill because it “will introduce new threats to the local [koala] colony”. Environmentalist and former Australian of the Year Jon Dee says this development could destroy Lend Lease’s “very good sustainability reputation”.

What would it take, then, to make humans koala-compatible? It’s not easy. Even now, some nights, locals spot half a dozen koalas on the 80 kilometre per hour Appin Road. A map strewn with black crosses shows koala roadkill.

But cars are just the tip of it. Even the black summer fires, which killed maybe 4000 koalas, weren’t the worst. For decades, the main threat to koalas has been habitat loss. From 2017, when the NSW government replaced the Native Vegetation Act with the cynically named Biodiversity Conservation Act, land clearing soared and koala numbers plummeted.

Australia, despite its reputation for wilderness, has one of the developed world’s highest land-clearing rates. It also has one of the highest rates of extinction. Those dots are not hard to join. Within Australia, NSW is the worst land clearer. Before 2017, our yearly average was 38,000 hectares; in 2019, according to the government’s own report, that almost doubled to 60,800.

But it’s not just about quantity. The idea that “habitat” is a green splodge on a map, easily replaced with another green splodge, is the simplistic idiocy that generated the whole biobanking “offsets” farce.

Koalas need connectivity. They have home ranges, attachments to particular trees, but they also need to move – to escape fire and to live, breed, expand their gene pool and maintain disease resistance. Stuck in a dead end – known as a “koala sink” – they mope and dwindle.

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This site sits at the nearest point between the Nepean River and Georges River bush corridors: a connection here, and across the raging Appin and Heathcote Roads, would link these koalas to the Blue Mountains populations. The Chief Scientist’s report recommends six such continuous corridors averaging 420 metres in width.

Lendlease insists it is “consistent” with this (it doesn’t use the word comply). Campbelltown Councillor Karen Hunt, in Tuesday’s council meeting, declared hotly that corridors “have been provided in accordance with the requirements of the Chief Scientist”. Lendlease development director Arthur Ilias told the local planning panel in December the company can’t widen the corridors because of the nearby retirement village. Pah.

That’s all demonstrably not so. Lendlease’s pretty road underpasses are neither committed nor required, so they may or may not happen. Their “corridors” are splodges – far fewer than necessary, far narrower – just 80 metres at many points – and, most crucially, fragmentary.

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Splodge-for-splodge won’t do it. Nor will pretty drawings, nor buying “offsets” with money. The government says it’s “committed to protecting koala habitat”. The council, and Lendlease, concur. If that’s so, they need to make the corridors and the connections happen – not when and if, now, up front. Koalas, like cyclists, need continuity. Otherwise, they’re in the fast lane of dogs and cars, fighting for survival.

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