Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Tonight I want to speak about Lake Malbena, in the Walls of Jerusalem National Park, in my home state of Tasmania. It is a most spectacular part of Tasmania and, therefore, one of the most spectacular parts of this world. I have been to the Walls of Jerusalem National Park many times, and I have loved the times I have spent there. They've nurtured my spirit. The Walls of Jerusalem National Park lies at the very heart of the beautiful heart-shaped green island at the bottom of this country—Tasmania. The Walls of Jerusalem National Park is part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. That means that it has been protected for a range of natural and cultural heritage values. It means that it is being looked after on behalf of all of humanity.

It also means that it is the Australian government's duty to hold this place in trust so that its precious values, natural values and cultural heritage values, can be preserved not just for people who are alive today but also for future generations. But the Liberal Party in Canberra and the Liberal Party in Hobart have comprehensively failed to do this. They are selling out Lake Malbena, inside the Walls of Jerusalem National Park, inside the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, in a secret deal with one of their private sector mates. That private sector mate of the Liberal Party has put forward a proposal for luxury accommodation at Lake Malbena and for numerous helicopter flights ferrying wealthy tourists into and out of the area.

This proposal is nothing less than a privatisation of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. It is a triumph of greed over respect. Development within the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area has been subject to two clandestine state assessments. The proposal was given the green light under the Tasmanian government's dodgy, secretive, expressions-of-interest process in 2016. The state government also re-zoned Lake Malbena as a self-reliant recreation zone in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area Management Plan, which has far fewer protections than a wilderness zone. This re-zoning was done specifically to accommodate the development application, and it was done after public consultation on the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area Management Plan had concluded. Just to step that out for senators: a draft management plan was put out that actually had Lake Malbena and Halls Island inside the wilderness zone of the World Heritage Area, which means that no commercial development is allowed at all.

That's what went out to the public. The public got a chance to comment. Many, many thousands of submissions were made in regard to other terrible aspects of that management plan. Those submissions came in, the government considered them, and then they put out the final plan. When we had a look at the final plan, to our horror they'd moved the boundary of the wilderness zone so that Lake Malbena—which had previously been in the wilderness zone, and therefore commercial development was prohibited—was suddenly outside the wilderness zone, which means that commercial development is not prohibited. To call this dodgy is an understatement. It was completely and utterly dodgy.

The Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service then undertook a reserve activity assessment of the proposal and issued a draft final determination to approve the project, subject to conditions, on 14 March this year, pending the outcome of a referral for assessment under federal law. The proposal was then referred to the then federal environment and energy minister for a decision as to whether it required his approval under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999—the EPBC Act. On 31 August this year the federal government announced its decision that the Lake Malbena project was not a controlled action and therefore did not require a detailed assessment or approval under the EPBC Act. This was a decision that started on Mr Frydenberg's watch and ended on the watch of Ms Price. The federal environment department's Assessments and Governance deputy secretary, who signed off on the proposal on behalf of Ms Price, advised that potential noise impacts from the helicopter flights in and out had been successfully 'avoided or mitigated'. Yet later he admitted that he was unsure how many flights there would be into the development in total, and he was not sure of the servicing and maintenance requirements.

The decision brief itself referred only to a maximum of 30 trips per year, but, hidden deep in the 100-plus pages of attachments to that brief, that was expanded on:

… the heli-use required to facilitate up to 30 guiding packages per year is in the vicinity of 60-120 return heli-trips.

This decision was made despite submissions from three government-appointed expert panels recommending against this development approval. This included the government's own expert panel on the management of the World Heritage Area and the National Parks and Wildlife Advisory Council, which advised:

The proponent does not address the fundamental concern that the proposal is for a development with several buildings, not a 'standing camp' …

I'll end that quote there to point out that the proponent is claiming that this is for a standing camp. That is a lie. It is for permanent structures. It's very important that people understand this. I'll go back to the NPWAC advice. The second thing that they advised was:

… without adequate consideration, precedents will be set that will degrade the World Heritage Values of the TWWHA.

The third thing that NPWAC said was:

NPWAC does not support this project progressing at this time and reiterates that contentious projects such as this should not be considered until there is an agreed framework to guide assessment.

That framework was asked for by the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations years ago and has still not been delivered—this is a tourism master plan—by state or Commonwealth governments.

On top of that NPWAC advice condemning the application, 129 detailed public submissions were made to the federal government, the vast majority of which stridently opposed this terrible intrusion into Tasmania's wilderness. These submissions opposing the Lake Malbena development came from environment groups, bushwalking groups, Aboriginal groups, fishers groups, anglers groups and the general public.

This is on the nose in Tasmania. It has been facilitated by a corrupt, secretive process that the Tasmanian people have been locked out of deliberately by the state Liberals with the complicity of the Liberals here in Canberra. We are governed by people who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing, and they are selling off Tasmania's precious wilderness piece by piece. Wilderness is such a precious thing in today's world, and it deserves to exist for its own sake, not as a foundation for greedy, rent-seeking profiteers. The Tasmanian government is not just selling off our wilderness; they are allowing the development of massive fish farms in publicly-owned waterways right around the Tasmanian coastline. They want to put a cable car up the summit of beautiful kunanyi/Mount Wellington, which will be a scar on that iconic landmark that is so precious to so many people in Hobart.

I've got a message for the major parties who support all of these things: these places, our coastlines, our wilderness, our forests and our mountains, are not yours to sell. And I've got a message for those who profit from these places at the expense of the values they were protected for: these are not your places to despoil. Tasmanians will fight back against this, and the Greens will be with them all the way.