Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I will deal with each amendment as they come up, rather than taking a lot of time now on each amendment, which I will only repeat later. The Greens will not be supporting this amendment, which deals with the industry representative. The amendment gives one industry specific representation on the authority. I know that the opposition suggests that an Indigenous person has representation. The Indigenous representation is specifically on the authority because of their knowledge and experience of Indigenous issues. That is particularly important for management of such an important area. This authority is not a representative body but a merit based body. We do not believe that there is justification for picking out the tourism industry for representation on this body. Everybody else will be there on the basis of merit except the tourism industry person, who will be there because they are a representative.

If we are going to a merit based body, we do not believe that it is appropriate to be mixing the two. We believe that there is nothing to stop a person with industry experience from being appointed to the authority under the current arrangements. The authority will be undertaking extensive consultation processes, which, if carried out properly, will be sufficient to ensure that the point of view of the tourism industry and other industries will in fact be taken into account. So we do not support the tourism industry being made a special representative on the board. We believe that the process outlined in the current bill is appropriate to deal with the merit based authority. Having said that, we do strongly support the appropriateness of having on the authority an Indigenous person with special knowledge and experience on Indigenous issues relating to the park. We specifically believe that it is important that we do have that knowledge and experience on the board. We will not be supporting the opposition’s amendment.