Environment
Compromising the Tarkine strategy
HELEN KEMPTON, Mercury
TASMANIA needs to grow up and stop political agendas, an academic told a forum in Strahan yesterday.
It was claimed tourism plans were being suffocated.
Tony McCall, from the University of Tasmania’s Institute of Regional Development, said a Cradle Coast Authority initiative to open up the Tarkine wilderness to tourists had been going gangbusters until the State Government and the Tasmanian Greens had intervened.
The Government compromised the authority’s Tarkine strategy when it announced it would plough ahead with a controversial $25 million road proposal put up by Forestry Tasmania.
The Greens then countered with a proposal to turn the Tarkine into a national park.
“The authority’s plan for the Tarkine was a community initiative under which no one was going to get its own way,” Dr McCall said.
“Things were getting done until everyone intervened.”
Dr McCall told the 100 tourism operators gathered at the forum that Tasmania’s lobby groups needed to stop competing against each other.
“When was the last time you heard of a road stopping an icon tourism product in its tracks in somewhere like New Zealand,” he asked.
“We have to grow up. We need to be smart and build smart infrastructure not just roads, roads, roads.”
Tourism in the North-West and West is in decline despite the state recording growth in a global travel slump.
“The [Cradle Coast Authority’s] bid to position the Tarkine as a global tourism asset should have been supported not complicated,” Dr McCall said.
Tourism Tasmania chief executive Felicia Mariani said the future lay in international tourism.
She said tourism operators needed to learn to deal with customers who did not speak English and who may want different cultural experiences.
“No international planes land at our so-called international airports, so Tasmania has to fight for our national share,” Ms Mariani said.