Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, before I start, earlier in debate today I read out a message that purported to be a tweet from the Leader of the Opposition, Dean Winter. He contested it at the time that it was his. He came up to me in the Chamber afterwards and categorically denied that it was his. I completely accept that at face value. I withdraw that message and apologise.
Honourable Speaker, I rise tonight to discuss one of the state’s most treasured natural places, kunanyi/Mount Wellington. On 31 July, the Wellington Park Trust announced that an application for Wellington Park to become a dark sky park was accepted by the International Dark Sky Association and it could go on, if approved, to complement other applications for dark sky sanctuaries in the southwest and in the Tasman region.
kunanyi/Mount Wellington is one of the state’s most accessible places to view our pristine southern skies. Hundreds of people flocked to the mountain on the night of 11 May to view the greatest Aurora Australis seen for over 20 years. Next week, during Beaker Street Festival, Theresa Sainty is hosting a sold-out event on kunanyi where she will share pakana stories of wurangkili liwari/night sky.
Tourism Tasmania is running an advertising campaign with an image of the Milky Way above Tasmania with the tagline, ‘Lights You Will Stop For’. Dark Sky Tourism is on the rise across the country. It is clear that Tasmanians deeply value the unobstructed views of their night skies. The untapped potential is astronomical.
I note that the Wellington Park Management Trust made the decision to prepare this application to become a Dark Sky Park on the back of consultation with the community. A number of survey respondents providing feedback on the Wellington Park Draft Values Statement identified that they deeply valued the view of the night sky from kunanyi, but felt it was inadequately protected by the 2013 Wellington Park Management Plan.
In response, the trust indicated that they would enshrine protection of kunanyi’s dark skies in the next management plan and protect them into perpetuity through the declaration of a dark sky park. This is how a community-led consultation process should work. The community spoke, and the trust answered. I hope the Department of State Growth does listen to the community as they undergo their strategic review, as they said they will, because the community has spoken many times on the cable car, as has the Hobart City Council and the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. They have said no. It will impact on the special values of the mountain.
Perhaps the Minister for Business, Industry, and Resources thinks that by rephrasing the question, by undergoing a strategic review rather than a review of the management plan, they may get a different answer to the question. But I suspect it will not.
When looking at the terms of reference for the Department of State Growth’s strategic review, it is difficult to determine what this review will achieve beyond the already in-progress statutory review of the Wellington Park Management Plan that the Wellington Park Management Trust is more than halfway through completing.
The terms of reference say they will examine the Aboriginal cultural heritage and values of the mountain. By the time the trust has completed their review of the management plan, they will have engaged in a community-led consultation process with senior knowledge keepers across the Tasmanian Aboriginal community for three years.
The wider Tasmanian community will have had multiple opportunities over three years to contribute to the review of the management plan by providing comments on the park values, park zones, the Spring-specific area, the Pinnacle-specific area, the planning scheme amendments, and the final draft management plan.
The minister says the community is invited to provide their feedback on the review, but he recommends waiting until after the discussion paper is released in October to provide feedback, giving the community less than six months to provide feedback into this review, which is due to be completed in mid-2025. The terms of reference of the strategic review say that they will be looking at the fire management of Wellington Park. The Minister for Business, Industry, and Resources notes that there is ‘no proper fire management for Wellington Park’.
Once again, the trust is currently reviewing the Wellington Park Fire Management Strategy, supported by the TFS and funded by a grant from the Federal National Disaster Risk Reduction Framework. It will be interesting to see what the Department of State Growth will find in less than a year: they have set out for their review beyond what the trust will find.
I would continue to go through the department’s terms of reference for their strategic review with a fine-tooth comb, but I will wrap up with the final and perhaps most important issue the department will be considering in their review: planning.
The cable car has been found to be inconsistent with Tasmania’s planning systems on multiple occasions. This is the eighth incarnation of a cable car up kunanyi. This government’s track record on planning is clear. If a development they support does not fit the planning scheme, they simply get rid of the constraints in the planning scheme. They have done it with the Macquarie Point Stadium, they are trying to do it with the State Coastal Policy to facilitate the Robbins Island Wind Farm, and it is hard to see how the strategic review is anything other than an attempt to do it to the Wellington Park management plan to facilitate a cable car.
