Lining up to shoot down Labor’s Tarkine plan

Tarkine National Coalition FOI revelations condemn Tarkine loop road
Today’s FOI revelations have vindicated the positions taken by the numerous groups who have opposed Forestry Tasmania’s ill conceived Tarkine loop road. The report this morning that documents released under Freedom of Information requests show that the Department of Infrastructure opposes the Tarkine loop road and that their commissioned independent report suggests that the road will damage the natural values of the Tarkine and damage the Tarkine’s wilderness brand.

This comes on top of recent revelations that the road will compromise the last remaining refuge of disease-free Tasmanian devils.
“The Tarkine road is shaping up to be one of the worst examples of killing the golden goose” said Tarkine National Coalition’s Tourism Project Officer, Scott Jordan.

“This is Forestry Tasmania again dictating policy to the government, and being given $23million of desperately needed tourism funding to waste on it’s own agenda at the expense of sensible and sustainable tourism in the North West.”

“The Cradle Coast Authority’s Tarkine Tourism Development Strategy showed how you could deliver an 1100 job tourism future based on the Tarkine, without the need for damaging new roading or compromising the wilderness values. Forestry Tasmania is more interested in securing it’s access to logging and getting taxpayer funded bridges and sealed road.”

“If the government’s own roads agency can’t support the road, then the government must see the light and abandon this noxious project.”

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Jeremy Rockliff MP
Deputy Leader of the State Opposition
Thursday April 16, 2009

Labor’s lack of vision for Tarkine

The State Opposition has stepped up calls for the government to abandon its flawed Tarkine Road proposal, amid reports that a risk assessment prepared for the government has warned that it could tarnish the wilderness brand of the area.

Deputy Opposition Leader, Jeremy Rockliff, said Labor’s proposal was typical of the government’s old-style of divisive politics and its focus on short-term political problems, rather than the long term interests of the State.

That Premier David Bartlett would persist with spending $23 million of taxpayers’ money on a new “tourist” road through the Tarkine that is opposed by the tourism industry and local councils and which a risk assessment has reportedly warned could threaten the area’s wilderness tourism brand is a classic demonstration of why, after ten years of Labor, Tasmania is heading in the wrong direction.

“Tasmania needs vision, leadership and planning for the future – not a cynical Labor political stunt designed to divide the community and which could compromise the very tourism values that are so critical to the Tarkine region achieving its full potential,” Mr Rockliff said.

According to ABC news reports, material obtained under FOI shows that the government is also bracing for legal action and protests over the development.

Mr Rockliff said there was a better way to achieve the tourism potential of the region, and generate jobs and investment, and this was the vision the Liberals had put forward.

The Liberals’ Tarkine Agenda would allow an immediate investment in infrastructure, marketing and tourism in the region.

It would provide a more strategic, targeted and evenhanded approach to investment in tourism in the region on a sound, responsible and sustainable basis and would provide an immediate stimulus to the local economy.