Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, I am going to ask you a question about a tourism development in relation to Table Cape Lighthouse. Before I do that, I would like to point out to all those here—because everything has a context in life; everything has a season—that you have been a great friend to the north-west coast of Tasmania and particularly my electorate of Braddon, and I am particularly interested in your tourism portfolio.

I thought you might like to know, Minister, before I ask you the question, that Table Cape, where the lighthouse is located—and I hope you come and visit sometime and enlighten yourself—was named by explorers George Bass and Matthew Flinders in 1798. This is the background to your announcement. It was named after Table Mountain which overlooks Cape Town in South Africa. I have had the great privilege of seeing that and I could see the parallel between the two places. It was fantastic.

You might not know, Minister, but it is very important in terms of the tourist potential of this area that Table Cape is a volcanic plug, unlike Table Mountain, and is some 130 million years old. Once it was very much forested, and now deforestation and weathering have made it one of the most beautiful areas. I know that the member for Groom has been to the north-west coast, to Table Cape, many times and knows that it is a patchwork quilt of fertility. I think it was the member for Groom who once said to me, ‘You know, your soil is so rich at Table Cape, Sid, if you throw a toenail in the ground it will grow a foot.’ That is the fertility of Table Cape.

Minister, could you please enlighten my electorate and particularly the Wynyard-Waratah Municipality, which of course has guardianship of the magnificent Table Cape, with the tulips and that, what we are going to do to boost tourism, particularly in relation to the lighthouse there? Could you also outline to us the process whereby the funding will flow through so that the municipality will have the benefit of the tourism development which this government, apart from all other governments, has committed to? I look forward to that, Minister. When is it going to happen?

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