Lake Malbena – Further Perversion of ‘Public Service’

Media release – The Wilderness Society, 18 June 2021

Further perversion of public service in push to privatise World Heritage wilderness

As if any were needed, there is now more evidence of the perversion of the Tasmanian public service in the Tasmanian Liberal Government’s continued push to privatise the island’s globally-significant national parks, including the world’s highest-rated World Heritage wilderness.

Thanks to an enquiry by the Fishers and Walkers group (see documentation below), the head of Tasmania’s Parks and Wildlife Service (PWS), Jason Jacobi, has confirmed that the service continues to provide assistance to Wild Drake in its efforts to seek approval for the helicopter-accessed Lake Malbena tourism proposal that PWS has already found would degrade almost 5,000 hectares of the world’s highest-rated World Heritage wilderness.

Wild Drake is currently seeking approval under the national Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act to construct private commercial helicopter-accessed luxury accommodation in the heart of the public Walls of Jerusalem National Park targeting “the very top of the market”.  The PWS is also yet to finalise its non-statutory “reserve activity assessment” of the proposal.

In publicly released email correspondence with the Fishers and Walkers group, Mr Jacobi confirmed that the PWS has provided “support” to Wild Drake in the form of technical documents and advice to support the proposal through the EPBC Act assessment, including a detailed study of flight paths over the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

“The provision by PWS of technical documents to the proponent continues the pattern of undue PWS support for this proposal. The Wilderness Society is concerned that this support is continuing despite the fact that PWS has found this proposal will degrade the very values the Service is supposed to protect,” said Tom Allen for the Wilderness Society Tasmania.

“This also begs the question how the PWS can possibly be expected to objectively assess and manage proposals that it is effectively also the co-proponent of?

“All this is happening on the watch of Tasmania’s Minister for Tourism, Peter Gutwein, and because of his Government’s ‘parks privatisation policy’.

“The Gutwein Government says it wants Tasmania to be the ‘eco tourism’ capital of the world and that it supports ‘sensitive development’ in the public’s national parks and yet, at the same time, it is actively inviting commercial tourism developments that deliberately breach the statutory Management Plan for the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, as the Tasmanian Audit Office has previously noted (para 3.6).

“If the Gutwein Government is serious about the island becoming a global eco tourism destination, it won’t achieve this aim by privatising public and globally-significant reserved land,” said Mr Allen.

In 2019, the Federal Court (paras 168-169) highlighted the fact that PWS had told Wild Drake to split its proposal into two parts for the purposes of referring it to the Federal Environment Minister under the EPBC Act, which Wild Drake duly did.

“It appears this PWS advice was provided to the proponent because “stage one” of the proposal would be more likely to be approved in its own right without having to undergo rigorous assessment under the EPBC Act. There is then a risk that, following the initial approval, the development would be expanded to include “stage two” – which proposes walking tracks in wilderness areas and tours to highly significant Tasmanian Aboriginal cultural heritage locations. In finding that such an outcome would not accord with the law, the Court recognised (at para 171) that this could make it easier for the second stage to proceed without adequate public scrutiny,” said Mr Allen.

The EPBC Act is the principal law that gives effect to Australia’s obligations to protect and conserve its World Heritage properties. Following The Wilderness Society’s successful Federal Court challenge, the Federal Environmental Minister determined the Lake Malbena proposal is a ‘controlled action’ because of the impacts the proposal would have on the values of Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, and therefore must undergo a detailed assessment under that Act. The Wilderness Society was represented by the Environmental Defenders Office in that legal challenge.