Transcript of public meeting organised by Residents Opposed to the Cable Car, Hobart Town Hall, 15 June 2021. Peter McGlone’s section is not as delivered but from his notes which were more extensive.
Vica Bayley
My name is Vica Bayley, I’m the spokesperson for Residents Opposed to the Cable Car. That’s a volunteer organisation community organisation that’s helping to lead the campaign to protect kunanyi Mount Wellington from the cable car, and all of its associated developments. We’re going to hear from Nala Mansell today from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, and we stand in solidarity with Tasmania’s palawa people. We acknowledge their connection to country, we acknowledge that we’re meeting today on palawa land, and we acknowledge their long, ongoing connection to kunanyi as a mountain and they continuing fight not only for land rights, but cultural heritage rights and recognition.
Before we go to Nala though, I just want to get give you a quick overview because some of you may have been alarmed a week or so, a couple of weeks ago, when the media was starting to report this development application is one step closer, you know, another step forward for the cable car. In a baseball analogy, some might be tempted to say, Well, this is first base. But I wanted to actually reassure you that this isn’t the first base. This is actually the hitting plate. This is the first time we as a community have got to see a full development application that supposedly outlines this development, its impact on the values of kunanyi Mt Wellington, and its impact on the values that we enjoy. So this is a first step. The council are receiving representations until June the 22nd. That’s why we’re here today, we’ve got one more week to get representations in and then it’s over to the council. The council will meet on July the 27th, to actually vote on these developments. And we’ll hear more about the council later on.
But today is very much about representations. Hopefully, you’ve grabbed a representation guide. And it’s also if you’ve made a representation already, today is very much about asking you also to contact friends, family, neighbours, etc. There are no limits on who can make a representation in terms of geography, you don’t have to live in the Hobart City Council area. So anyone across Tasmania in Australia or indeed around the world, if you’ve got a passion for kunanyi, and an opposition to the cable car, can make a development representation. And you don’t have to be 18 either. So if your kids, like mine, are passionate about the mountain, you can help facilitate their engagement as well. Now, just before we start with our speakers, we decided with this event we wanted, we started to cast around for speakers and we realised there was such incredible talent, knowledge, expertise in local people. And this is very much a local issue. This is our mountain. It’s the backdrop to our city, it’s the place that connects us to the wild west of Tasmania. And that’s a really special thing.
I want to also just reassure you, or at least put to you that this is not a transport solution. You know, this is not about an alternative to a road up the mountain so that you can get to the snow. This is a land grab for some of Tasmania’s most iconic, as yet undeveloped, real estate: three and a half thousand square meters of commercial mass tourism real estate is up for grabs. You put aside the road, put aside the towers, put aside the impact on us, this is privatising publicly-owned and reserved land for a mass tourism development. So let’s not be under any illusion that is some altruistic development that’s going to help us enjoy our own mountain.
I want to welcome to the stage Nala, we’ve been working together for many years on a range of issues, but it’s been a real pleasure to work with her on the kunanyi cable car campaign. And I think that the status of this development, its engagement in Aboriginal heritage issues, and the information that’s put into the development application is a sad reflection on how we treat Aboriginal heritage in this state and Aboriginal people’s connection to their heritage. I’ll let Nala tell the story.
Nala Mansell
Ya pulingina. I hope you’re all comfortable. My apologies, my speech is a bit long.
(palawa kani introduction – not able to transcribe)
Hello everyone and welcome to stolen Aboriginal land. I’d like to acknowledge the muwinina people of niplauna – now commonly referred to as Hobart – who owned and cared for these lands that we meet on here today, including kunanyi, our sacred mountain and I acknowledge the palawa community whose connection to our sacred lands is as strong today as it always has been.
Ever since the beginning of time, or for at least 60,000 years, our old people owned, cared for protected and nourished our sacred mountain, kunanyi. As an Aboriginal woman, I was born with a responsibility to my ancestors who protected kunanyi over thousands of generations, to ensure that it is protected for many more … and I remind anyone who now calls lutruwita their home, that you too have the same responsibility to our old people. And I pay my respects to all those of you who have joined the campaign for the protection of kunanyi.
kunanyi, our majestic mountain, is a significant, spiritual and sacred Aboriginal cultural landscape … from the mountain peaks that overlook the timtumiliminanya / Derwent River, to the ancient sandstone caves, and the freshly flowing waters … kunanyi was and is, a place of safety and sanctuary for our people.
When the white man first arrived on our shores, Woorady a young warrior from Bruny Island went to kunanyi to see what the white man had done to his lands and told his people, many of whom also went to kunanyi to view the devastation being inflicted upon their ancestral lands.
kunanyi can be seen from many places and at a great distance. It is an obvious landmark and would have been known by many Aboriginal people in the south-east, Derwent Valley and midlands. Song lines and story lines were told and sung about kunanyi. Stories were told about its creation and what it represents.
Suddenly our spiritual, cultural, and physical connection to our scared mountain is at risk of being destroyed. The developer – Mount Wellington Cableway Company – has shown a long and profound disrespect for Aboriginal people, our culture and ancestral heritage. From registering kunanyi.com as a private web name and refusing to relinquish it, to appealing the request to do an on-site Aboriginal heritage assessment, this company has shown poor form when it comes to my people.
In what could be easily be described as one of the most outrageous and disrespectful moves against the Aboriginal community that I’ve seen in a long time, the MWCC took it upon themselves to fly a white archaeologist over from the mainland to assess the Aboriginal heritage values of kunanyi. And in his report he claims that there are no significant Aboriginal heritage values at risk from this monstrous cable car. Could you imagine the uproar if a white archaeologist was flown in from Tasmania to mutijulu to do a stones and bones archaeological survey of uluru, and then attempt to tell the traditional owners of uluru that there is no Aboriginal spiritual or cultural significance? We are just as outraged as what they would be!
The ‘Aboriginal Heritage Assessment Report’ makes no credible attempt to understand the deep and ancient spiritual, physical, cultural and historical connection that the Tasmanian Aboriginal community have to kunanyi. The archaeologist did not attempt to consult with Aboriginal people and the report makes no mention of the loud, proud and public opposition to the cable car development that Aborigines have voiced.
It does not represent kunanyi as a cultural landscape and reduces Aboriginal heritage to a narrow, shallow and ignorant archaeological perspective; if there are no stones or bones under the development footprint then heritage won’t be affected.
Whilst the report may claim that the structures of the cable car do not interfere with any physical evidence of Aboriginal occupation, it will completely destroy the Aboriginal landscape of kunanyi.
The report does not even conform with current management arrangements for kunanyi, the Wellington Park Management Plan (WPMT) or meet its requirements.
While the WPMP is a non-Aboriginal construct that has never properly accounted for Aboriginal heritage, it at least acknowledges kunanyi as a cultural landscape of special spiritual significance to Aboriginal people and it sets out plans to better understand Aboriginal heritage and procedures developers must follow. Specifically, it requires that ‘all Aboriginal heritage values are protected and conserved.’
The ‘Aboriginal Heritage Assessment Report’, submitted as part of the cable car Development Application, failed on many fronts: archaeologically, culturally, and even against weak heritage protection laws. It fails to meet the requirements of the state government guidelines for Aboriginal heritage assessmentsi. It fails specifically to provide any evidence of Aboriginal consultation. This is a very critical failure. The Minister for Aboriginal Heritage, The Aboriginal Heritage Council (AHC), Aboriginal Heritage Tasmania (AHT) and the Aboriginal Community require broad consultation on all Aboriginal heritage assessments within lutruwita. The failure of this investigation to engage and seek input from Aboriginal people is also contrary to the Australian Archaeological Association (AAA) Code of Ethics, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) code of ethics and the Australian Association of Consulting Archaeologists Incorporated (AACAI) code of ethicsii.
Given the indisputable cultural, spiritual and landscape values of kunanyi to Aboriginal people and the loss of these values should a cable car be constructed, a permit should be refused on this basis.
For countless generations, our people have ensured kunanyi has been cared for and protected-and we, the Aboriginal community vow to do whatever it takes to ensure it remains that way!
ii https://www.aacai.com.au/about-aacai/code-of-ethics/
Vica Bayley
We give particular thanks to Nala for stepping in this morning at the very last minute when Theresa had to ring in sick. So congratulations, thanks.
I just want to unpack one thing, remembering that this is a company that went to court, went to the tribunal, to try to low bar Aboriginal heritage, to try to avoid doing an onsite Aboriginal heritage assessment. Put that aside for a minute. And then think about the assessment that Nala just mentioned. It’s a stones and bones assessment, to look for stones and bones under the footprint of the development. It didn’t look at cultural landscape issues. For 200 years in Australia, we’ve been using the lack of evidence of occupation as an excuse to take land, to appropriate culture, and to ignore the concerns of Aboriginal people. This is terra nullius, on our very own mountain, kunanyi.
This is a white elephant, this development. It’s a massive, massive development. It’s mass tourism, it’s incredibly anchored to some really fickle markets that the developer published as part of the DA, five year old economic impact assessment that doesn’t actually, isn’t actually anchored in reality. There is no business plan that has ever been published for this development that demonstrates that it can actually make a profit. Not that that’s what we want. Graeme Wells is an archaeologist. He’s the principal of Wells Economic Analysis, he’s an academic who has had appointments around the world in Canada and New Zealand, in California, in Canada, and most recently had a long stint with UTas.
Graeme Wells
Thanks for inviting me to this important meeting. I always think that when environmental issues are at stake and cultural issues, it’s always good to follow the money. And the money arguments often way importantly with politicians, and unfortunately in this case there isn’t much money there for the proponent. So the proponent, as Vica said, has put together a package which is based on a business impact statement that’s six years old, and in many respects so out of date that they’re taking a lend of us to put it up to the council as part of their submission. And it’s not just in the impact statement that you’ll see this come up; it comes up in their community benefits scheme, it comes up in their planning submission. And the figures in the business impact statement just reverberate through the whole case.
So what’s wrong with it? Well, it overstates the benefit and understates the costs. It understates the costs, in the sense that the technology and the actual design of the project has changed quite significantly, since the business case and impact statements were put together. Now the base is not there at Cascade, it’s going to be further up the mountain. Now the market for construction activity is incredibly tight, business construction costs have probably doubled. And so the cost part of this is totally out of whack. Then on the revenue side of it. As Vica mentioned, there are various market segments identified. One which contributes $10 million to revenue of the project is mountain biking. The project is based on the idea that there will be a steep gravity trail from the Pinnacle down to Junction Cabin. That isn’t going to happen. The cost of that is 10 times per metre of the cost of the Derby mountain bike trails. So we can put that 10 million dollars aside.
We can also put aside some of the wholesale market, which is based on cruise ships that – I don’t know whether you’ve noticed – there aren’t a great many at this point and the market is unlikely to grow to where it was for quite a long time. The third thing, and I don’t have much time, third thing is the number of days on which this thing can operate. So if you look at the proposal they claim it will only be subject to high winds on two and a half percent of the total days not available. (audience laughter) No it’s not meant to be a cartoon. So an expert in the field has done a comparison between this cable car project and Table Mountain, which they often referred to as an example of a very successful cable car. It turns out that if you look at the reports, annual reports from the Table Mountain cable car, between 20 and 30% of the time it doesn’t operate because of high winds. And further more the wind frequency on kunanyi is probably twice the number of days as it is on Table Mountain. So I think if they want to get this development project up, and who knows they might want to sell it on to another developer, they really need to come clear on the economics and they have not done so so far.
Vica Bayley
Thank you. We heard from Nala about the connection that Aboriginal people have to kunanyi. But as as people of European or non-Aboriginal heritage, we do have a connection there and sense of place is very strong in Tasmania. It’s a place where we recreate. It’s a place where we view to look at the weather to see what’s coming and so forth. And so European heritage when it comes to the mountain, or at least non-Aboriginal heritage, post colonial heritage is a significant issue as well. The Hobart City Council is supposed to be assessing this development application and the proponent should have covered off on both the Planning Scheme requirements and the management plan requirements the Wellington Park Management Plan. It feels as if the European heritage elements of the mountain – and the values there go back a long way, this is Tasmania’s first park, declared in 1906 – have been completely overlooked. So we’re really honoured to today to have Maria Grist here to tell us about some of the European heritage. Maria and her husband John have a long history of researching Tasmanian history and have expertise in post colonial history and a penchant for the mountain. They’ve got a massive collection of postcards and slides and so forth. And Maria has authored a couple of books: The Romance of Mount Wellington and Huts of kunanyi Mount Wellington, so Maria thanks for joining us.
Maria Grist
The proposed cable line will run over nationally significant European cultural heritage sites, rendering some vulnerable and now-hidden sites visible from the air and exposing them to potential abuse. Archaeologically-sensitive sites which will be impacted during construction include parts of a convict era logging complex, the only such intact complex remaining in the country, through to remnants of 150-year-old recreational huts, which are unique as a cultural movement of their time, through to an historic but still living walking track network and more.
The Cableway Company claims that their proposal does not involve a place listed on any heritage register. However, the Wellington Park Management Trust maintains a database containing over 500 historic cultural heritage sites. The mountain’s heritage significance has been recognised in numerous reports compiled by heritage experts. All of these reports have been ignored by the company. Just because these sites have not yet been included in a formal register does not mean that they do not exist. It only means that a formal heritage register of these sites still needs to be created.
It is claimed by the company that the cable car would result in an “increase in a broad sense of civic pride amongst the local population”, but no report, study or cultural authority is cited to justify this claim. In fact it is possible that the opposite would be the case. Adding interpretation panels and pictures of cultural heritage into the Pinnacle station interior, does not justify the endangerment or destruction of those heritage sites themselves.
The cable line is set to go up in the Myrtle Gully area, which is one of the richest in terms of European cultural history. Access will be needed for machinery used in the erection and maintenance of the line. A wide swathe of trees will need to be removed up the slope face, along the length of the line. Have there been studies done by the company on what is actually under the proposed line, not only in the cleared swathe, not only at the actual pylon sites themselves, but also on any access routes needed for vehicles and machinery to erect and maintain the line? To my knowledge not a single study has been done to find out which historic hut remnants, which early convict era remains, which parts of the historic track network, or which other cultural sites will be impacted by this build.
It’s our cultural heritage and has been for generations. From Lady Jane Franklin to Charles Darwin, from artist Piguenet to poet Dorothea McKellar, and so many more who valued the mountain, right up until today. Heritage expert Gwenda Sheridan describes the eastern face as a nationally significant associative cultural landscape. It’s a part of Hobart, a part of who we are. Let’s do what we can to ensure this heritage remains intact for future generations so that it can become a part of their heritage too.
Vica Bayley
Thanks Maria. We can see a bit of a theme here, which is that in this development application with this project, it’s as much about what’s not in the development application as what is in it that concerns us as a community. And whether it’s the approach to Aboriginal heritage, whether it’s the omission of European cultural heritage, whether it’s putting in a five-year-old economic impact assessment in a post-COVID environment, you really have to ask him the question: is this arrogance? Or is this incompetence? And there’s the old adage, conspiracy or stuff up? You know, normally you’d go for the stuff up. In this case, I’m not 100% sure.
Our next guest is John Day. John’s an economist and he’s got a lot of very diverse experience, particularly in the traffic space. He’s done modelling for the traffic flows of the M4 freeway in Sydney, he’s been optimising rail movements on the Pilbara. He’s got professional experience in visual impact assessment and a whole range of other things. And he’s also a local resident. Residents Opposed to the Cable Car been rolling out a range of public meetings, smaller public meetings in halls at Kingston and Ferntree and last night at Rosny. David turned up to one of those, at Ferntree, and his knowledge and his expertise in analysing the traffic impacts of this development are quite profound and also quite shocking, given the level of traffic that this development will put on our road. So I’ll introduce David.
David Day
Thanks. And for those of you who know me, you’ll know that John Day is actually my son and he’s a farmer. So I’d love to be talking to you about the mountain. Unfortunately, Vica has asked me to talk to you about my familiarity with part 12 of the Australian Roads Guide to Traffic Management, which is the professional standard for preparing traffic impact assessments. Short answer – as you’ve probably heard and probably are expecting – is the traffic impact assessment for this project misses the professional standard on almost every count. If I’d paid for that traffic impact assessment on any project I work for I’d be wanting my money back. It is disgusting. It doesn’t meet accepted professional standards. It has major omissions. It uses misleading and unsupported assumptions, and it ignores most of the risks to road safety, to congestion and the broader traffic impacts of this development. This is not just somebody opening a corner shop. The standards specify what you should consider for a major tourist development, which is what this is.
The only roads they look at are in the Macrobies Road precinct. Apparently all of that traffic magically appears in Cascade road and turns into Macrobies Road. No idea how it gets there. They leave out Davey Street and Macquarie Street. I walked down Davey Street to come here today. There were 15 cars queued up to turn right into the southern outlet and then go up Macquarie Street. That was a 20 past 11 in the morning. Only 10 of those cars got through on the change of lights. The other five were waiting. They want to add traffic to that intersection. They leave out Macquarie Street. I live in South Hobart, I shop in Macquarie Street. They leave out the shops, the schools, the childcare centres, the doctors’ surgeries, the hospital, the cafes, the restaurant, the sports grounds, the churches, none of those get mentioned because Macquarie Street isn’t in their traffic impact assessment. What else is required in the standard. Pedestrians and cyclists … the only mention of them is to say that nobody will ride their bike or walk to get to the cable car station. So they aren’t creating any new ones. The standard specifically says you must consider vulnerable road users. They don’t. Noise and air quality: try searching for those words in their report. They aren’t there. Emergency vehicle access: not there. All things that are required in professional standard.
You’ve heard them say that there won’t be any traffic in peak periods. Well, I’d say two things. One, their prediction of traffic is wrong. And two, they don’t understand what peak periods are. Good practice is actually go out and look at the traffic like I did walking down the street today. Clearly whoever wrote this has never been in Davey Street or Macquarie Street and actually seen what happens there. For a start, South Hobart isn’t just a commuter route. Traffic peaks aren’t just driven by morning and afternoon peaks. But let’s put that aside for the moment. They can’t even get peak period right. They say that peak period that they’re referring to is between 5 and 6pm. Anybody driven in Hobart streets at three o’clock in the afternoon? We’ve all got one of these or sat nav in our cars. You can go to Apple or Google or TomTom and they’ll give you the data on Hobart traffic and you can look at it and it goes along fairly steadily through the day. At three o’clock it goes up and it stays up until six o’clock. That’s the real peak period. So how did they come up with this (inaudible) mini traffic peak periods? Well, what they did is they took them the cable car in Cape Town, and they took the cable car that’s in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. They said, we’ll use their traffic patterns as a reflection of what we’re likely to have. Well, the one in Sydney is 100 kilometres from Sydney. And it’s open from nine to five. Guess what, all their traffic’s in the middle of the day. This is not equivalent to this proposal.
So now, what will really happen, traffic to the cable car will be dictated by the tour bus operators, who in turn will be dictated to by the cruise ship operators. If I look at, for example, one of Tasmania’s bus tour operators – Heart of Tasmania tours – they publish their timetable for when there’s a cruise ship. They have their last departure from Macquarie Wharf heading out to various destinations at 230 in the afternoon. Their return buses from those destinations are leaving at 3.30 and 5 o’clock. So they will even on their own standards be generating traffic in peak periods. And in the real peak period, it is also the peak of the traffic that they expect to generate. I could go on.
Their assumptions on traffic and parking. They assume that there are three and a half people on average in every car. I went up the mountain last week and stayed up there for a couple of hours. It’s an average of 2.2 that I saw, the council’s figures say 2.4 so pretty much close to it. If the visitor figures are right, there’s going to be 50% more cars going to their base station. If the visitor figures are wrong then we’ve already been told their economics is screwed. What happens when those extra cars turn up at the base station? They haven’t told us. No, inevitably there will be times when the car park’s full. Where do people turn around. We don’t know, they just haven’t bothered to mention that.
Road safety. They misinterpret the accidents on the mountain to make it look more dangerous than it is because they’ve left out all of the roads that have got congestion and intersections, which are the places where car accidents occur. They understate the risk of any car accidents occurring in South Hobart. This report is dangerous. Right? Yes, it understates the cost to all of us of the congestion that it will create. But it simply fails to deal with the fact that this development has the potential to increase the number of traffic accidents, to increase collisions with pedestrians because it goes through a major pedestrians area, to harm vulnerable road users. It fails to mention it and it does nothing to mitigate any of those risks. The council should reject this simply because the report does not meet professional standards.
Vica Bayley
We work closely with some other groups as well, such as the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre and indeed the Tasmanian Conservation Trust. And I’m going to introduce Peter McGlone in a minute. He’s a stalwart of the conservation movement in Tasmania, and not only in terms of a whole raft of issues, waste and so forth, but also a stalwart of the fight to protect publicly-owned land reserved for private development, such as the Rosny Hill. We need to acknowledge and recognise that this is an assault, a mass tourism assault, not only on our mountain on the western shore here, but the eastern shore has got it as well and then spread throughout our parks and reserves, particularly the World Heritage Area. It’s happening as well on different scales, and with different levels of deceit and disruption. So Peter is going to give us a bit of an overview regarding process and visual impact and some of the holes in this development application.
Peter McGlone
There has been a great deal of discussion about the lack of details or gaps in the assessment of the Mt Wellington cable car. First there was a long delay while there was a planning appeal and then a Supreme Court case about Hobart City Council’s demands that a Aboriginal heritage study be done.
Now community people are pointing out a wide range of unanswered questions. Many people are questioning HCC’s decision to release the development application. And then there are problems with how the proponent represents the proposal on its website.
The proponent has made a great deal of their intention to only clear the minimum area of forest for installing the cable car towers. They claim that only 10 m x 10 m area of forest will be cleared so there will be little impact on forest species and virtually no visual impacts. They seem so keen to convince us that the planning report contradicts the Biodiversity Consultant’s report regarding the extent of vegetation clearance for towers beyond the footings of the towers.
The proponent’s environmental assessment by North Barker (page 50) raised the risk of tree fall on the two lower towers:
The risk of tree fall threatening the stability of towers may need to be determined to understand whether surrounding trees would be considered a hazard. If this were the case, then the scale of impact could be significantly larger.
The ‘stability of towers’ sounds like a really fundamental issue.
On page 101 the planner states:
(ii) The extent of the clearing necessary for the construction of the towers is restricted to the four corner foundations. Once installed, vegetation will be allowed to grow back, as ongoing vegetation clearance is not required, beyond the first 9 metres of canopy maintenance from the Base Station to Tower 1.
To protect the pylons form tree fall would probably require clearing around the pylons to a radius of about the same as the potential tree height plus effect of wind on a falling tree. The impacts of clearing this area, both on forest values and visual impacts have not been assessed.
So in reality there will be an area of forest cleared that will resemble small logging coupes. Why the planner contradicts the environmental consultant is anyone’s guess.
There is also clearing required under the cable car path which the proponent says is limited to a short distance. North Barker states “The proponents 49 indicate that the extent of clearance for the cableway is minimal with a 9m corridor of foliage needing to be cleared between the Base Station and Tower 1 as the cable car ascends through the canopy. From Tower 2 the route is understood to be well clear of the canopy for the remainder of the journey.
The reference shows that the source of information provided to the consultants was merely a personal communication from the former proponent Adrian Bold. The consultants state that “From Tower 2 the route is understood to be well clear of the canopy for the remainder of the journey.” People say “understood” when they haven’t been given definitive reason.
The biggest visual impacts from the proposed cable car are the views of the pinnacle infrastructure – the massive building, the top pylon (35m high) – and the moving gondola. The visual impact of these would be most severe as viewed from near the pinnacle, the top of the Organ Pipes, approaching the pinnacle from walking tracks and even from the cable car. The pinnacle buildings and gondolas will have a big impact at night, with the restaurant and bar operating to 10pm.
Go to the MWCC website homepage and scroll down to “Experience Tasmania’s Next Big Thing in Tourism”. It shows a video of the gondola approaching the Organ Pipes as viewed from above – with the gondola and cables visible. Then the perspective swaps to looking above to the Organ Pipes as if it was the view from the gondola, but now there are no cables, no tower and no gondola – they have simply erased them from the view of cable car passengers. Similarly, the video at the top of the homepage only shows the very top of the Organ Pipes tower – when viewed from a drone high about the pinnacle. When the drone gets closer to the tower the view of the tower is not shown, the camera is not looking in that direction.
These videos are the most prominent of all their visuals on the proponent’s website and there seems to be a conscious decision to hide the top tower. Because the proponent didn’t show this top tower the TCT (Jack Redpath) did a digital image to show it, including a person for scale. The MWCC must be nervous about these issues as MWCC has posted a comment on our Facebook page insinuating the image is defamatory.
The proponent’s visual impact assessment has primarily assessed the view of Pinnacle infrastructure from as far away as possible and from single view points. Many of the most visually intrusive elements are not discussed or shown.
- There are no images showing the pinnacle buildings and gondolas emitting light at night.
- There are no images provided that show the gondolas passing across the Organ Pipes.
- There are no images showing the view to the top tower and pinnacle building from the cable car gondola.
On 1 July 2019 the Hobart City Council made a request for further information, including for additional visual impact assessment.
The consultant’s report states:
In their RFI, Hobart City Council has requested the following additional assessment:
- extends the evaluation to views from nearby tracks where there is line of sight
- extends the evaluation to views from the moving components of the cable car (speed, frequency, size, material, glare and reflectivity, lighting, total number of cabin in operation on the cable lines and the relative spacing) and night time impacts
- provide further analysis of the base station and related infrastructure
First of all this tells you that the proponent probably intended to avoid making a visual analysis of these issues most importantly the views from nearby walking tracks, moving components of the cable car and night time impacts. You might think then the results of this analysis would be compelling.
But they have done an analysis that you do when you do not want to give your opponent any ammunition. With walking tracks there are no photo montages showing the cable car development from different view points on the tracks. There are long descriptions of each of the main walking routes with commentary of when you may or may not see the Organ Pipes. But not a single mention of the cable car buildings, tower, cables and gondolas.
With the moving cable car, the consultant merely describes the dimensions of the cable car gondolas, the number of movements and duration of operation – the inputs to an analysis – but no actual analysis or depiction of the impacts. With the night time impacts, the consultant merely describes the sources and types of light and the time period that lighting will be required. But no analysis of the actual impacts of these lights. And no images of night impacts.
The decision to avoid stating any impact or providing any digital images is probably about avoiding this being publicised during the consultation phase. But the HCC may just decide to complete the analysis that the proponent did not do.
The planners report provides a very elementary description of the visitor experience on the gondolas and at the pinnacle and avoids any response to the management objectives for Pinnacle Specific Area, most importantly avoiding reference to the need to:
- Provide for a range of day-use tourism and recreational opportunities based on sightseeing, scenic tourism and appreciation of alpine environment;
It remains to be seen just how significant an omission this is. Are the objectives very important and if so will the HCC make this assessment.
But lets try to fill in some of the blanks in regard to the visitor experience. We have mentioned some of the visual impacts for cable car users. But how crowded will it be?
In regard to the pinnacle complex the planner says: “The building has been designed to accommodate a maximum daily limit of 10,000 people”. Clearly they don’t expect this number to be there at any one time so how many do they want? The number of visitors via the cable car per day will be a maximum of 4480 in summer and a minimum of 2880 in winter.
The maximum number of people who can be transported to the pinnacle per hour is 640 but the intended operating mode will deliver 320 people per hour. It is uncertain how long people will stay but if people stayed 2 hours then there would be 640 people in the pinnacle complex at anyone time.
Add to this the people who arrive via car or other means and who can use the restaurant, bar etc and there might be 1000 people in the complex at a time. This is just under the 1035 ‘Maximum Capacity At Any Given Time (People)’ for the main spaces i.e. Café/retail, Restaurant/bar/function space and viewing Areas/sanctum.
The pinnacle building will be like Mona on a busy day. When it is fine just how many of these thousand people will flood outside and trample the pinnacle vegetation? What will visitors think of this experience? Does it allow for appreciation of the alpine environment?
The proponent is trying very hard to convince people of their carbon credentials. The website is full of comments like:
ENVIRONMENT: IMPROVED BEYOND CARBON NEUTRAL
CLEANER, SMARTER. SWAP CARBON FOR HYDRO
But the alternatives to polluting private cars already exist and they aren’t a cable car. You can leave your car behind and take the Mt Wellington Explorer bus, which has operated since 2019. When the current proponent first started talking about a cable car in 2021 electric cars were not much more than a fantasy but they are now quite common and becoming much more common. When we have electrified the bus service we would have the problem fixed.
Vica Bayley
Our discussion about the inadequacies of these consultants reports, whether it be the Aboriginal heritage, the lack of the European heritage, the traffic, and so forth, this is not meant to be a pile of consultants, you know, we’re not trying to take down consultants. And I want to just point out the noise assessment as probably a case in point, it’s not necessarily the consultant’s fault that it’s missing key information, such as an assessment of the noise impacts of the traffic that goes into the base station. It’s the proponent’s fault, because as is written in that report, the proponent was not forthcoming with the operating hours of this development. So they wouldn’t give the consultant the data about trucks that are going to be coming that site, day and night. And therefore that consultant simply could not measure the noise impacts of that traffic. So while, you know, we do question the substance and the credibility of these reports it’s not necessarily on the consultants themselves. Our focus is entirely about this proponent. And the fact that they have taken two years to get a development application to a point where it can be advertised for assessment, and the fact that still has so many glaring holes in it, not only calls into question their capacity to put forward a project proposal, but certainly calls into question their capacity to build it, and operate it in a safe, efficient and effective manner that’s in line with the conditions that they set for themselves.
Next speaker, and needs little introduction, it’s Cassy O’Connor Member for Clark for the Greens, and you may ask why we’ve got Cassy up here. We’ve invited all the members of Clark to participate and Cassy was the only one to take up the offer. And we’ve done we’ve done so for one reason. The authority of the Hobart City Council as both the planner, the planning authority, and the landowner, has been called into question and has been actively undermined by Parliament. If you think back to the the Cable Car Facilitation Act that was all about going around the council to give landowner consent so that people could go on to that property, and start doing measurements and drilling and so forth to inform this development application. That also includes capacity for compulsory acquisition of the site, the land that’s needed. So a massive centre on the pinnacle, privatising the massive centre on the pinnacle is facilitated within that Facilitation Act. Similarly, the Major Projects Legislation passed last year, tailor made for a development such as this: complex, controversial etc. Where a handpicked panel can assess this development and it doesn’t have to comply with the Planning Scheme, it doesn’t have to comply with the management plan. And indeed, even when it’s passed, not one of you or us to make a representation can can challenge us as a third party as is our right under LUPA. So I want to invite up to the stage. And before I do, I want to acknowledge Rosalie Woodruff, and Gideon Cordover, two other elected members, and anyone else that might be in the room here today. But to give us an overview of Parliament and the role of parliament I invite Cassy O’Connor.
Cassy O’Connor
Thank you. And hello everyone. It’s so good to see the town hall filled COVID-safely with people who just love wild kunanyi. I also want to pay my respects to Tasmania’s First People the palawa, to Aboriginal elders past, present and emerging I pay my deepest respects. And I acknowledge the Aboriginal community as the (inaudible) of this beautiful island lutruwita Tasmania, which was never ceded by its first people. I really thankful for the invitation to speak to you today. And I guess I should apologise for the collective rudeness of my colleagues as Clark MPs. I didn’t think any of the Liberal or Labor MPs would turn up. I thought Kristie Johnston might, but but she has not. So I’m really proud to stand here and represent the Greens today and my colleague, Rosalie, and Gideon, from Kingborough Council are here today. We’re here because we will always defend wild lutruwita. We’re here because we love wild kunanyi and like everyone here, it’s a place that gets us deep in our hearts. And I think it evokes in us a protective response, which is why we’re all here, this beautiful mountain cannot defend herself and we will need to defend her.
There was a stunning short film opened them as the Long Gallery early last week by filmmaker Joe Shemesh, and had a soundtrack by composer Dean Stevenson, it’s about maybe 10 or 12 minutes long. It’s so profound, there’s not a human being in sight. It is black and white, deeply atmospheric. And it really brings home to you what a powerful brutal presence the mountain is in our lives and what an ancient, ancient cultural landscape and is and how fragile it this. And some of the imagery, you can see because it was filmed in this massive storm that happened up there about 18 months ago. And you can see the mountain defending itself against a wall of ice and snow. But it struck me as I was watching it, that it can’t defend itself against human greed. And that’s where we come in.
The Greens don’t and will never support a cable car on kunanyi. We will never support privatisation and grotesque commercialisation on the pinnacle. We stand Tasmania’s Aboriginal community and every Tasmanian who loves wild kunanyi just the way it is. I wanted to give you a short summary of the legislative perfidy that has been enacted mostly by the Liberal Party in the parliament, but with full support of Tasmanian Labor. So in November 2013, then Clark MP Elise Nicole Archer introduced the Land Use Plan and Approvals Developments on Mount Wellington Amendment Bill. She introduced it in 2012, it was passed in November 2013. And this is from opposition. A Liberal MP tabled and brought on for debate this legislation and the Labour Party who we were in government with at the time, went ‘Oh, we can’t be anti-development so we’ll just support it.’ So the Liberal the Labor Parties voted to remove the Wellington Park Trusts veto powers over developments and activities inside the park. That was the first act of legislative perfidy; there were five of us standing in opposition to the legislation, all of us Greens MPs. In 2017 tabled and absolutely jammed through the parliament within the space of a month in September was the Cable Car kunanyi Mount Wellington Facilitation Bill of 2017 and that’s the legislation that Vica was talking about that facilitates the cable car but also paves the way for privatisation for people and areas of land that the proponent needs. And of course, that time, there was only three of us, but the three Greens voted against that legislation. And I should just mentioned in passing. It was a Green Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, who worked with the Tasmanian Aboriginal community to make sure that kunanyi is known by her true and first name. And I love hearing young people now talk about the mountain or kunanyi, and I very rarely hear them talk about it as Mt Wellington, which is a beautiful thing.
So we obviously hope many people here today are preparing a representation by next Monday on the development application, and that raises many of the issues that you can hear today. And I would simply encourage you not to be daunted by the prospect of having to make a submission to Council. It can be three paragraphs of points that you’ve picked up here today, that Council is required to read or take seriously and respond to in making a determination. But we’re not sitting idle. We know that the proponent has had strong political support all the way through, and I suspect that the reason that the DA is such a dog’s breakfast is because it wasn’t written by people in the Department of State Growth, because in the Department of State Growth remember we had a special email address and dedicated staff public servants facilitating the cable car from Mount Wellington Cableway Company. So maybe the DA’s a dog’s breakfast that it is because the Liberals have finally just stepped back a bit and why wouldn’t they? They’ve had two pieces of legislation passed through the Tasmanian parliament, that oil the wheels for this cable car. But we are ready. We have drafted for tabling next week the Cable Car Facilitation Repeal Bill 2021. The Land use Approval’s Amendment Wellington Park Management Trust Veto Bill of 2021, to restore the Trust’s power to have a real say,
There are two main rivals I think to human existence. Love and fear. And part of the reason we’re here is because we love kunanyi and we fear what may happen to her. One of the things that my colleagues in the Labor and Liberal parties will respond to every time is fear. And if you feel so strongly about the mountain, that you want your Members for Clark at least to know, ring them up, write an email, send a letter. It might be four years until the next election. But this issue has some way to go yet. And my colleagues and Members for Clark should know that a whole roomful of people who love the mountain were insulted by their lack of appearance.
And this little short story I’ll tell you about my daughter, who’s 21 years old, and she was really worried once the DA had landed. And we had a conversation about it at the table. The next day she came to me, she said, it’s all over social media. We’re going to blockade the mountain if they approve that. So I think we should feel really comfortable and strengthened by the fact that so many young Tasmanians recognise that beautiful mountains for what it is and want to save wild kunanyi.
Vica Bayley
Just to reiterate, following Cassy, you’ve heard, you know, four or five of us talking about the failures of this DA. Our assessment is that this development won’t can’t shouldn’t pass the planning process. Through Hobart city council through the Wellington Park trust or indeed through the federal government when it has to assess EPBC. But we know, and as I mentioned, that the parliament has systematically undermined the authority of the Hobart city council so it is critically important to keep a focus on state politics, but also not to forget the people in the council. Next year – this is not going to go away in a hurry – next year are council elections, and we do need to make sure that we are thinking about kunanyi when we go to those elections.
We thank all the speakers for your expertise, today’s been very much about content. It’s it’s been content heavy, and hopefully we’ve given you some content to put in a representation. Take a representation guide, if you haven’t got one, we have an online pro forma representation tool that you can do, put your name into an email and flick it off, do that. This is a combination of both numbers and technical input. So it is critically important that if all that you can do or your mother in law or your father and all your kids can do is put your name on a pro forma and send it in, that’s fine, do it. If you’ve got more capacity to analyse the detail, reference back to the management plan and Planning Scheme and send in your personal representation, that’s even better. But the key message is, we’ve got one week to put in a representation. We all need to do it. And once we’ve done it, we all need to ask others to do it as well.
I want to just thank our guests, my colleagues in the residents opposed to the cable car I haven’t met a volunteer, ragtag band of activists as talented and as passionate as them. So I want to just put a shout out to everybody. And they’ve been doing it for many years as well. We’re ably supported by by organisations like the TCT and Tasmanian Aboriginal centre, Tasmanian national parks Association and others. So thanks to them. But in particular, I want to thank you for coming out today and for I guess, showing your love and your care for kunanyi Mount Wellington. This is a campaign that can absolutely be won that has to be won and it will be won. I hear Cassie and I hear Stella and she says that all her mates are going to blockade this cable car. And I think you know young or old there’s probably many in this room who will join that. But what a waste of energy to have to go to all that effort. Now is an opportunity to kill this thing stone dead for decades. I can’t promise it won’t come back like the zombie attack thing. This is the eight cable car development for kunanyi Mount Welling since 1906 when it was proclaimed a park. I can’t promise it won’t come back. But to avoid all of that effort, to avoid legal challenges, to avoid blockading and putting your bodies on the line, the simple thing we can do now is make a representation to the council before June 22. After June 22 there’ll be an opportunity to lobby our councillors and reinforce their perspective that this is a really critical issue that has overwhelming public support. But for today, thank you for coming out. Thanks for making representations thanks for for spreading the word and I guess always take the opportunity to get on the slopes or on the pinnacle of kunanyi because if ever we need recharging and solace and some sustenance for the fight, that’s where you can find. So I urge you to get out there and make the most of it. We are truly blessed to have a place, a mountain, a symbol, a cultural landscape like that that leaves a backdrop to our city.
