Leadership key to future

Lord Mayor Ron Christie was wrong when he wrote in the Mercury yesterday that the destruction of “the heart of our city and community” is inevitable if we do not immediately pull up the drawbridge.

Lord Mayor Ron Christie. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

HOBART Lord Mayor Ron Christie has a point. Mass low-yield tourism is not the right fit for Hobart, and it is not the right fit for Tasmania. It never will be. But Ald Christie was wrong when he wrote in the Mercury yesterday that the destruction of “the heart of our city and community” is inevitable if we do not immediately pull up the drawbridge.

The future for Hobart that the Lord Mayor says the community wants – a city that is liveable, sustainable, educated and connected – does not rely on, as he suggests, putting the brakes on new arrivals. Instead, those outcomes will have much more dependence on our authorities getting the planning right to ensure that as more people arrive we have the necessary infrastructure and services in place.

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In fact, most of the bugbears Ald Christie chose to link with “mass tourism” are actually the result of Tasmania’s local and state governments having been caught off guard by our recent overnight success, from traffic congestion to the rise of Airbnb. And as for hotels “being constructed at bullet-train rates with height limits pushed to the max”? Well, the Hobart City Council that Ald Christie has served on for many years has had a pretty big say in those approvals.

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But putting aside the flaws in his argument, Ald Christie’s key point raises a discussion we should all be having. It goes to the heart of what could be the biggest challenge facing Tasmania right now, and that is how are we going to get the balance right.

As we have written before in this column, it’s not easy in times like these, when things are going so well, to always strike the right balance between progress and heritage, between development and conservation, and between the wants of tourists and needs of locals. We rightly don’t want to put at risk the tangible things we love: our colonial architecture, our beautiful landscapes, the clear air, and the fact we can generally get a park outside our favourite shop. And we also want to protect the intangibles: our small-town nature, and the related care for each other that our unique one-degree of separation delivers.

But there is no reason we can’t have our cake and eat it too. As we say, getting that balance right is the key – and that relies on planning. And planning, in turn, relies on the leadership and vision to see beyond the horizon and start working towards that goal now.

Things might be a little out of balance now, but we can work together to recalibrate and ensure we get this right into the future because the present economic circumstances really are a rare opportunity for Tasmania that we must take advantage of.

And so rather than freaking out, shutting the doors and closing ranks, we need to instead work together to both grow and protect Tasmania. Because done right, this is not a zero-sum game. As a community, we should be genuinely welcoming anyone and everyone who wants to visit or live here. And we should never say no to people who want to invest in our state.

But this place is ours. And so we retain the right to dictate terms. The future of Tasmania is bright. But success is rarely accidental. It requires long-term vision, lots of planning and hard work. And all of that, in turn, generally relies on calm, effective leadership.