Tourism can work in wonderland
Luke Martin defends the process for setting up tourism ventures in Tasmania’s wilderness areas
THERE has been a concerted campaign over recent months by some of the more vocal conservation groups to demonise the State Government’s “Expression of Interest” process and misrepresent the aspirations of commercial tourism operators working in and around Tasmania’s nature reserves.
There are more than 200 commercial tourism operators licensed to deliver tours and visitor experiences within the Tasmania Wilderness World Heritage Area, our National Parks and Crown land. Many of these businesses have operated in these protected areas for decades with no fuss. Some are iconic with Tasmania and our tourism brand. All create economic activity and jobs in regional Tasmania.
I doubt any of these operators, or anyone who works in the nature tourism sector in Tasmania, would not consider themselves a deepseated conservationist. They share their values with visitors from across the globe, who in turn hopefully have their environmental conscience awakened by spending time in Tasmania’s natural heritage and returning home advocates for its further conservation.
At its best, this is how genuine eco-tourism should work for a destination, and by and large this has been the experience in Tasmania over a long time. But it’s clear some Tasmanians now have concerns about the growth in this part of our industry, and especially the Expression of Interest process.
To explain the EOI process from the industry’s perspective, I’ll share the true story of a small tour operator who some years ago wanted to start a simple guided walk on
an obscure and little-known track on the West Coast.
No one else was operating a commercial tour on that track or proposing to do one. It was completely his own original idea, and for this reason he wanted exclusivity to be the sole commercial tour operator on that track. He had an idea for a niche product and wanted to proceed properly.
The operator submitted his proposal to the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service, where he was promptly told that because he was seeking an exclusive licence, Parks had no choice but to take his original idea and advertise it publicly to see if anyone else might also be interested in running a private tour on that particular track. Bugger the guy’s intellectual property, or his considerable investment of time and money in developing his original idea. Parks simply had no other way of progressing his request for exclusive commercial access to that one track.
I have other examples of ideas so unique and outside the box they were simply left in the too hard basket until the operator lost motivation and went away. One experienced operator went back and forth with parks managers and a revolving door of parks ministers for close to a decade seeking to simply start an assessment process for his proposal for a new tourism venture within the TWWHA.
What this meant is that despite the tourism industry, State Government and most of the Tasmanian community wanting to see more outstanding nature tourism ventures established in regional Tasmania, the feeling within the industry was that it was bloody hard if not impossible to get anything different or unique up in our protected areas.
Ironically it was around the Forest Peace Deal, where our industry first started discussing with the then Labor-Green state government, ways to more effectively encourage and manage unsolicited proposals for new tourism ventures in Tasmania’s public lands.
These discussions eventually led to the “Expression of Interest” policy put forward by Will Hodgman to the 2014 state election.
From the industry’s perspective, the EOI policy is about doing three critical things to stimulate and facilitate investment: PROTECT the proponent’s intellectual property to encourage innovative and creativity in tourism. ENSURE the State Government manages unsolicited proposals for new tourism ventures within a reasonable time frame. MAKE public what projects are being considered for approval where, and by whom, to facilitate and encourage debate about what’s appropriate before they are formally assessed.
The EOI process was never about bypassing or weakening longstanding and statutory assessment processes for determining whether a project should proceed or not.
There are no fast-tracking approval processes, as has been clearly demonstrated by the Lake Malbena example.
From our perspective, it is simply a more effective way for the State Government to seek, receive and respond to unsolicited proposals from our operators for new tourism ventures in Tasmania’s protected areas.
When you look at some of the tourism ventures that have progressed through the EOI process and are now operating, I am sure most Tasmanians would consider them totally acceptable and consistent with our values as a state; mountain biking in the Blue Tier, guided boat charters
off Port Davey, adventure tours in the North-West, remote trekking in the far south.
Of course, proposals will emerge from any process that generate controversy and warrant debate. This only emphasises why the assessment process for tourism ventures in Tasmania’s protected areas must be robust and based on science and land management values, not political or industry will. We must continue to identify and respond to examples of where growing commercial tourism needs to be better managed in these areas, such as right now tightening helicopter and cruise access into our protected areas.