Mr BAYLEY (Clark) - Mr Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about wilderness. There have been some significant developments in this regard in recent weeks. Wilderness is not only a third of Tasmania in the Wilderness World Heritage Area. It is not only an important tool to protect the values of the World Heritage Area. It is not only central to our brand and identity and a key driver of tourism. Many people demonstrate that wilderness and wild places are a major motivating factor for visiting Tasmania. It is not only a really important value that Tasmanians seek out for the solitude, for peace, for connection, for reflection and for a sense of place. Wilderness is actually a thing. You can map it, you can measure it, you can degrade it, you can restore it. It has a number of key elements.
To have wilderness, you need to be remote from mechanised access, it needs to be undisturbed by colonial or modern society, and it needs to be big enough to enable the long-term function of natural systems and diversity. The Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area Management Plan defines wilderness as:
An area that is of sufficient size, remoteness and naturalness to enable the long-term integrity of its natural systems, diversity and processes, the maintenance of cultural landscape and the provision of a wilderness recreation experience.
The reason I raise this tonight is because last month, the World Heritage Committee endorsed a retrospective statement of outstanding universal value for the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage area. This is the definitive document of the values of the World Heritage Area. There has not been a complete one since the property was inscribed in 1989.
There are two significant things in this retrospective statement of outstanding universal value. First, it embraced the Aboriginal heritage values and the ongoing connection of the palawa people to the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage area and its country and values. That was something sorely missing in official documents of the World Heritage Area.
Second, it highlighted the importance of wilderness as a value in the natural criteria of the property and also as a component of its integrity. Integrity is a component of World Heritage. It is a measure of the quality, the intactness and the veracity of a World Heritage property. The Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage area is truly special. It meets more criteria than any other World Heritage property on Earth when you combine both its natural and cultural heritage values.
The retrospective statement of outstanding universal value talks up wilderness and identifies wilderness as a key value numerous times. I will quote a couple of times from it into Hansard. This is about the Tasmanian Wilderness property:
This is one of the world's largest and most spectacular temperate wilderness areas and a precious cultural landscape for Tasmanian Aboriginal people who have lived here for approximately 40 000 years.
The property's great size and wilderness character enables significant natural biological and geomorphic processes to continue in terrestrial, coastal, riverine and mountain eco systems and under integrity, a critical component of OUV, its large extent remoteness and quality of wilderness is the foundation for the integrity of its natural and cultural values.
It embraces wilderness as one of the key values of the area and indeed the key value of integrity. Wilderness should be afforded key protections here in Tasmania. It is expressly required in a number of documents. The World Heritage Area Management plan calls for wilderness to be protected, the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area tourism masterplan identifies wilderness as a value that needs to be protected. The National Parks and Reserves Management Act identifies wilderness as a value that needs to be protected in national park categories. I raise this not only because the World Heritage Committee just recently passed this, but it is significant because the Tasmanian Government still has a policy of inviting expressions of interest for tourism developments that would degrade and destroy wilderness values in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.
There are numerous proposals on the table that breached management plans at the time of their submission and they would demonstrably impact on wilderness values. The expression interest process still has up on its website an invitation to put forward a tourism proposal even if it is non-compliant with the management plan. It says:
A participant is not excluded from lodging a tourism EOI submission for a proposed development that may not be fully compatible with the current statutory and regulatory framework.
Why is the Government inviting developments that are non-compliant with the management plans, the very documents that are written to protect the heritage values of these areas? Examples of some of the developments that are on the table at the moment are the Lake Malbena helicopter access luxury huts where zoning was changed and there is no social licence; the South Coast Track huts where a prohibition on huts in the Southwest National Park was removed in the 2016 management plan; and Lake Rodway lodge at Cradle Mountain. Zoning was changed there. It is obscenely large in proportion to where that is.
It is sad to see management plans being changed to facilitate developments but this retrospective statement of universal value articulates exactly why wilderness needs to be protected. It gives new minister Duigan everything he needs to strengthen the reserve activity assessment process in parks and reserves so that the Parks Service does wilderness assessments, actually assesses the impact of these developments on wilderness values so we can honour and uphold the protections that are afforded via the National Parks and the Reserves Management Act, the management plans and the like. More importantly, particularly when it comes to the Lake Malbena development, it gives federal minister, Tanya Plibersek, everything she needs to reject the Lake Malbena project because it is clear that it contravenes the management plan. It would impact on the wilderness values and as demonstrated by the World Heritage Committee, wilderness values are central to the importance of that property.
