Statement – The Wilderness Society Tasmania, 1 May 2023

Submissions & expert witnesses seemingly ignored in another problematic Lake Malbena ‘consultation’

Last week, Wild Drake Ltd published its response to the public consultation held in September last year regarding its contentious helicopter-accessed luxury accommodation proposal for Lake Malbena, inside the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

Disappointingly, Wild Drake’s response was limited in scope and does not provide a full list of submissions. This is despite assurances from Wild Drake early in the consultation process that all submissions will be published in full. The proponent also appears to have only responded to some submissions, and for the most part the identities of those who made the comments that were addressed have not been provided. This is outside the norm for public consultation.

Before this process began in September last year, concerns were raised by members of the community over the proponent running its own consultation process. These concerns were realised after it became clear that the proponent’s website, where submissions were required to be lodged, limited the submissions in word count and format. The website also gave no confirmation or record of the submission being received when people submitted one.

Unfortunately, the Commonwealth Environment Department indicated that the law does not provide guidance on how proponents should run such consultations and so there was no recourse to address these issues.

The Wilderness Society’s submission, submitted on its behalf by the Environmental Defenders Office, was substantial, detailed and contained new material prepared by a number of scientific experts, which has not previously been provided to the Commonwealth Minister for the Environment. In the proponent’s summary, our submission has been erroneously summarised as containing ‘duplicate information’, and not warranting any further response by the proponent.

Gallingly, it appears that the concerns of literally thousands of people from across the country, who went to the trouble of putting in a submission have not been counted by the proponent. We believe that the number of submissions from the Wilderness Society supporters alone is at least 4,000, which far exceeds the 626 referred to in Wild Drake’s response. While some of these public submissions may have been provided in the format of a pro forma response, many of these submissions also included unique additional comments or an entirely original submission. Regardless, most of these submissions appear to have been sidelined in the proponent’s summary.

“A fundamental purpose of EPBC Act consultation is to allow the public to have their say on projects that will have a significant impact on matters like our World Heritage Areas and threatened species. But public confidence in this process is weakened where it is not clear whether proponents are playing by the rules,” said Tom Allen for the Wilderness Society (Tasmania).

“We are concerned that the proponent has failed to comply with its earlier assurance that it would publish all the public comments it received, in full, as part of this process.  Without this action, members of the public who provided detailed submissions in response to the proposal cannot be confident their comments found their way to the Department and, ultimately, the Minister who is assessing it.

“As it currently stands, we consider that it would be inappropriate for the Department and Minister to proceed to assess the proposal until they can be assured all the public comments have reached them. The public needs to have confidence that the substantial impacts of this proposed development on the world’s highest-rated World Heritage wilderness are being properly assessed in accordance with the law.

“The public and public institutions, from the World Heritage Committee down and from the public World Heritage Area’s grassroots up, are looking to Australia’s Environment Minister to fulfil Australia’s World Heritage obligations.

“But at this stage, it’s hard to know what’s worse: the negative impacts on World Heritage values of the proposal or the process to assess it,” said Mr Allen.