Parks Victoria and its CEO guilty of the worst excesses of bureaucratic overreach on climbing bans

A free climber Tom Perkins swings out on a climb near the summit of Mount Arapiles. Picture: Jason Edwards

It is hard to recall a worse example of bureaucratic overreach than Parks Victoria’s vicious and undemocratic treatment of the nation’s rock-climbing community.

From the outset five years ago, Parks Victoria went on a mission to discredit a politically weak user group with every blunt pen-pushing instrument it could find.

In the case of the Grampians National Park bans, some of the claims of environmental and cultural harm were just wrong.

So wrong or unverifiable that Parks Victoria should have been laughed out of town.

But then-CEO Matthew Jackson and those advising him had the pandemic on their side.

Few – except those with a passionate interest – were in much of a position to care or properly scrutinise the extent of the bans or the agenda being pushed by Parks Victoria.

None of this is a criticism of the First Nations groups who wanted – and want – their heritage to be protected.

Of course it should and must be saved from gratuitous harm.

The problem here is the process and the death of commonsense that has prevailed throughout this controversy.

The switchboard of public opinion lit up when the bans bled recently into Mount Arapiles, roughly a four-hour drive northwest of Melbourne.

Arapiles is one of the world’s most revered climbing locations and Parks Victoria went and doubled down on that community as well.

What it didn’t count on was the size of the backlash.

Climbers say this is because of the depth of the love for Arapiles, which also has deep meaning to the local Indigenous groups.

But again, the process was so secretive and lacking in consultation that the government kicked another own goal, this time on a global playing field.

It deeply embarrassed the Allan government, just as the behaviour in the Grampians would have embarrassed the Andrews government had it not been for the virus.

It doesn’t take much to scratch beneath the surface and wonder why Labor has taken this long to act.

There are two things going on.

The first is that Premier Jacinta Allan has a bushfire in the regions and outer suburbs over access to public land.

The rock climbers were being seen as emblematic of Parks Victoria’s shut down access mantra that was becoming lived experience across the state.

The second is how this all bleeds into the Victorian treaty process.

First Nation’s people were getting slammed for the government’s odd decision-making and arrogant refusal to consult climbers.

This helped no one and led to Thursday’s ousting of Jackson and review into Parks Victoria.

Allan will be hoping the crisis has been averted but that will only happen if meaningful change is implemented and that park users believe the politicians.

Good luck.