Parks Victoria agenda of vilification and secrecy against rock climbers

Bec Hopkins ascends the climb named Kachoong at Mount Arapiles in western Victoria. Picture: David Geraghty

No reasonable person believes cultural heritage that is substantial, visible and rare should be deliberately abused.

But in declaring it such, it is government responsibility to ensure the response is both transparent and just.

Parks Victoria’s solution, as usual, is neither. There is no transparency at all.

In the case of rock climbing in Victoria, Labor has conducted a disgraceful witch hunt that fails pretty much every test of good governance.

It started not far from Mount Arapiles in the Grampians in Victoria’s west, where the government used a confected campaign of vilification of rock climbers to justify sweeping bans.

Parks Victoria, while destroying vast areas of bush to produce a commercial walk, has gone on an extraordinary frolic.

The frolic has now been transferred to Arapiles, which is really the shining jewel of climbing in Australia. Or was.

Climbers estimate half the routes have been shut at Arapiles. The decision will tear apart the nearby community of Natimuk, 324km northwest of Melbourne, where a boutique town built on climbing and farming has flourished for decades.

It will slow to a trickle the flow of overseas climbers who have travelled to Australia to enjoy the serenity of the Wimmera plains.

In the middle of this is the Barengi Gadjin Land Council, whose people were split over the future of the rock they call Dyurrite.

Parks Victoria’s cowardice is legendary. It refused to comment on Tuesday; the organisation – with Labor’s full backing – has wreaked havoc on a pursuit populated by a lot of Labor voters.

The Victorian government made the announcement on the eve of the Melbourne Cup and the US elections, knowing the shutdown of much of Arapiles climbing would be unpopular.

It’s called putting out the garbage.

It will take a change of government in Victoria to restore balance and fairness to the rock climbing crisis and everything else that has gone wrong since the start of the pandemic.