STATE: If You Go Out in the Woods Today You’re in for a Big Surprise …

More lies and deception revealed on the 3 Capes project.

Just as what was anticipated, the government’s innocuous compact bushwalkers hut blended into the scrub has finally morphed into a high-end tourist village complex, replete with expensive building materials, and a notably invasive footprint into a pristine section of the Tasman National Park wilderness.

Well here it is – All trees around the village’s northern zone have been removed, and most of the immediate fringing zone is ground down to dirt.

Earlier on Tas Times I claimed that the 3 Capes hut sites were to be located into a pristine zone that would see the immediate forest area slashed and trashed.

This was strongly rebutted by the TICT director Luke Martin who said …

“What complete and utter rubbish.

The huts on Three Capes will look nothing like this, as anyone who has been briefed on the plans by Parks & Wildlife will attest.

The perimeter areas around the huts are absolutely not being cleared as this picture fabricates.

The bushfire protection zone around the huts requires understory and overhanging limbs up to 2 metres in height to be removed. Everything else stays including all the large trees, and therefore the canopy around the huts.

Nor is it anywhere near accurate to refer to the huts as villages. The physical footprints of the sites are comparable to that on the Overland.

The physical impact of the whole track development represents less than 0.5% of the total land area of Tasman National Park.
 
Messeurs Mead & McGlone speak for a noisy minority who will never accept Three Capes as a project, and want National Parks left as the exclusive domain of hardened, experienced bush walkers.

It’s duplicitous advocacy around an extremist conservationist agenda, that’s out of touch with the interests of Tasman Peninsula community, the Tasmanian tourism industry, and broader public”.

Well Luke it is time to confess!

Either someone was telling you porkies or you were completely hoodwinked by the bumbling bureaucrats who are hell-bent on climbing the greasy pole just to gratify the ministers of the day …

It is estimated that $45 million of taxpayers money will be spent to complete this first section of the project – What an extravagant waste of resources …

So far the government hasn’t announce the commercial tender for the project, so it is assumed that the $8 million that was supposed to be contributed by a commercial operator has been waived by the government, which means taxpayers have coughed up again.

From day 1 – there has been no accountability on this farcical project that seems to have been given a blank cheque, which has been fully supported by Greens MHA Cassie O’Connrr and Senator Nick McKim.

This commercially-driven project will undoubtedly set a precedent for future inappropriate commercial developments in the Western Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

Shame on all advocates around!

• George Smiley in Comments: Of course the construction materials arrive by helicopter. And these are not opulent. Speaking as a a tradesman outside of material transport costs I could build one of these units for around $100 thou. each with my own little hands. Or using a chainsaw mill and helper, a nice bush hut from trees felled on the spot for the cost of petrol, roofing iron, nails and a summer’s wages. No spas though. But these monkeys have friends in industry, and this is an oversight and integrity-free state. So the previous comment was tongue in cheek. In fact the whole forest renaissance/tourism bonanza is BS. There isn’t enough quality forest left anywhere and you are about to see Chinese and other tourism dry up. Even if I am wrong, any accommodation income won’t even cover staff and catering costs, like the Dismal Swamp fiasco.

• Clive Stott in Comments: Thank you Ted Mead for the article. What a disgusting waste of resources when we are being led to believe there is no money for essentials and we have to tighten our belts. Doesn’t seem the way to bring a budget into surplus, when the cream is being scraped off the top with stunts like this. It seems to me someone’s mates must be benefiting from this project, and who is going to benefit afterwards? Who benefited from the wilderness timber removed from the site? Look at all the people that have been put out of work to build this blot on our landscape. Michael Ferguson, as Health Minister how can you be a party to this when our broken health system is crying out for money that would be spent more wisely by dedicated staff and benefit more people … and where there is some accountability.

• Max Edelweiss in Comments: I happened to be reading a Department of Education report for 2012-2013 last night and noted $129,000 was paid to relocate a demountable classroom from Brighton to Cygnet. So the typical ‘government quote’ cost of this is unsurprising as one imagines the same kind of cronyism and incompetence in project management and oversight pervades all departments, especially ones such as Parks or Tourism which would bear little public scrutiny.

• Clive Stott in Comments: #1: There is more money in that steel thing than there is in the shacks. Is it the base for another structure; a bus depot, train station, or something? Bronwyn Bishop will have no trouble coptering in for the official opening. Well there you go, aren’t they still procrastinating over a helipad at the RHH? Dr Marcus Skinner how can you be refused after this squandering? As I was saying in #9 it just shows you someone has got their priorities all wrong!

• Ted Mead in Comments: #13 Clive – I have qualifications in structural steel engineering so I can assure you that this hot-dipped galvanised, completely over the top monstrosity of a walkway is ridiculously designed to the max. This 4 metre wide extensive platform will most likely be where all the pollies, bumbling bureaucrats and hanger-on’s celebrate their fanfare opening replete with copious crates of Grange Hermitage and gluttonous luncheon. It pretty well looks like the correct dimensions for outdoor carpet bowling. Maybe spa baths after all? Who knows what the intent is, but nothing is beyond the imagination or budget here! A treated pine structure would have sufficed at a fraction of the cost. The only consolation is that the frame will survive the next inevitable bushfire. What really needs to happen is for an inquiry to be undertaken on this taxpayers flouted project. But considering that all 3 political parties in Tasmania support this loopy lemon then that will never happen!