Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This weekend a group of bushwalkers, fishers and other community members will host a picnic on Tasmania's Central Plateau before a small group of walkers depart for Lake Malbena, where they will stage a symbolic reclamation of Halls Island and the surrounding wilderness. Tasmanians should not have to stake a claim like this to our treasured wilderness, which actually belongs to all of us. Moreover, it is patently shameful that the Tasmanian government is hiding behind a secretive process and has gifted Halls Island to a developer for a luxury private camp. Heavens, we don't even know the details of the lease or the money that might have changed hands. Tasmanians are right to be appalled by our government's dodgy expression-of-interest process for developments inside our national parks and Wilderness World Heritage Area. There is so much we don't know, not least because proposals are assessed with little public scrutiny. In fact the whole process is so disturbing that it has caught the attention of the state Auditor-General, who is now investigating the EOI process. To top it all off it now seems that taxpayers' money is being used to upgrade public sites that had been earmarked for private development. Tasmania's precious wilderness belongs to all of us. It is not the government's and it is not for the government to virtually gift it to private developers.