Flinders Chase National Park

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:16): My question is to the Minister for Environment and Water. Why should a tourism development be exempt from native vegetation clearance rules in Flinders Chase National Park?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Minister for Environment and Water) (15:16): The deputy leader is of course referring to the recent regulations that have been developed by the government to help enable a very important project to be moved forward within Flinders Chase National Park. We know how difficult Kangaroo Island has had it in the last 12 months or so, not only hugely impacted by the bushfires but obviously one of those parts of our state that so particularly relies on the tourism economy so as to lose out perhaps more intensely than other parts of the state from the loss of international tourists following the COVID-19 pandemic.

This government has been working very hard to re-imagine the tourism offering with regard in particular to national parks on Kangaroo Island through a project called Reimagining Kangaroo Island Parks, looking at the way the management plans across those parks work, how they can be refreshed and how our investment as a consequence of the loss of assets in our Kangaroo Island parks, particularly those on the west end but not exclusively the west end, can be refreshed and renewed and repositioned for the tourists of 2021 and beyond.

Members in this place would be more than aware of the challenges that were presented by the proposal put forward by the Australian Walking Company to create a multiday walk with fairly high-end ecopods to cater for the accommodation needs of tourists who are doing that multiday walk. The government has sought to find a way to enable that project to go ahead but to do so in a way that brings the community and particularly the environmental stakeholders together, the people who are passionate and who have stewardship of that park, whether it's the friends groups or whether it's the organisation known as Eco Action.

We have worked very hard in recent weeks, and recent months really, to get alongside those stakeholders to bring together the Australian Walking Company with the environmental stakeholders and actually mediate an outcome that could see that project go ahead in a way that may or may not require the additional native vegetation clearance that was initially proposed and may or may not require the intent of that regulation.

But I am pleased to inform the house that that agreement has gone very well. We are very close to finalising an agreement. I hope that sees the discontinuing and the settling of that very troubling situation with the court action, which was divisive amongst different groups in the community. It was pitting tourism and economic interests against environmental interests, and that is not something that we want to see.

In fact, we want to create a situation where private activity can occur within our national parks in a way that leads to environmental benefits, and we articulate that as something we call the 'conservation dividend'. We are asking all private activity operators in our national parks to be able to articulate and demonstrate what conservation benefits will flow from profits that might arise from their activities. This is the agreement that we want to reach. We are very close to reaching it. I'm really pleased that the different groups have been able to come together. The divisiveness looks like it has been put aside and we can get that win for the environment and Kangaroo Island, which has a really important tourism economy.