New polling shows majority support tourism development in national parks

TOURISM development in Tasmania’s national parks has strong support among voters, new election polling shows.

Large manferns along one of the walks at Mt Field. Voters have given support to tourism d

TOURISM development in TasmaniaÂ’s national parks has strong support among voters, new election polling shows.

In a sign jobs are likely to win out over environmental concerns at Saturday’s election, the poll of 2682 residents conducted for the Sunday Tasman­ian by ReachTELfound 62.2 per cent supported national park tourism developments.

The Liberal Party’s policy of opening up the state’s wilderness World Heritage area and national parks to “low impact” eco-tourism ventures has resonated with many voters.

Support was strongest in the job-hungry North-East and North-West, where 65.6 per cent of respondents in Bass and Braddon favoured parks development.

The Liberals say smoothing the way for eco-tourism developments in protected areas would create 8000 jobs by 2020 and lift visitor numbers.

Premier Lara Giddings said the policy was pointless as dev­elopment could already occur within parks but the Tourism Industry Council of Tasmania said regulations were prohibitive.

The Tasmanian National Parks Association is strongly opposed to “unlocking” parks to private businesses, fearing the move could inhibit public access.

The association argued tourism developments worked best when built just outside national parks boundaries, such as at Coles Bay and Cradle Mountain.

Association president Robert Campbell said claims that National Parks were somehow “locked up” were nonsense, describing them as the most open type of land tenure in the country, with universal access.

But he said accommodation developments were best suited to “tourism nodes” on the edge of the wilderness, saying they were already working very well in the state.

“Coles Bay, the Cradle Valley and Strahan are expemlary examples of where that type of development works,’’ he said.

“Instead of giving private access to a private developer inside a National Park, the whole community benefits when you put those nodes outside.”

But Tourism Council of Tasmania chief Luke Martin said his organisation would always back low-impact, high-conservation value projects that allowed more people to experience the state’s natural wonders.

He said the poll results were not surprising, given how well Tasmanian had already developed eco-tourism experiences tourism within the state’s protected areas, adding that hotels in National Parks were not what people were coming for.

“The likes of the Cradle huts walk, the Maria Island Walk and Gordon River Crusie — they are all examples of tourism that happen to be in our reserve system and they are all broadly acceptable to the public.”

Tasmanian Conservation Trust director Peter McGlone called on supporters of further tourism development in National Parks to specify where they would draw the line on new projects, saying allowing more firms to offer bushwalking tours was quite different to large accommodation resorts being allowed in sensitive places.

Mr McGlone said there were already hundreds of commercial operators who based their businesses on experiences within National Parks, with new operators facing little to no barriers to entry.

“Let supporters of development with National Parks prove that there’s a need for more accommodation in reserves before they go down that path,” he said.