Page 3120 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 10 September 1991
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think we can isolate the question of this sort of site from commercial considerations altogether. Clearly, a national park is not an appropriate location for a hotel/motel complex or a casino or a McDonald's outlet.
Mr Stefaniak: A gaol.
MR HUMPHRIES: Or a gaol. It may be appropriate for some private or non-government activities to be undertaken there and, as you indicated, a monastery - in this case a Buddhist monastery - would not be an entirely inappropriate use for that site. However, I suggest that in this case we have crossed the Rubicon already, and it may be that the best thing to do is to bear this kind of flexibility in mind in the future and attempt to consider, should the situation ever arise again, whether an existing infrastructure for a purpose since overtaken by declaration of a national park might be appropriately converted to a private or non-government facility such as this.
I do not, therefore, agree with the recommendation in paragraph 4.16 that those space tracking stations should not be made available to private development, if that is a blanket recommendation that applies to all sites that might exist within the bounds of the National Park. I am not saying that it ever will be, but it may be that at some point in the future there could be some appropriate development of a site such as that that would balance the requirements and amenity of a national park with the value of that particular site and the infrastructure developed already on the site.
MR MOORE (9.56): I have just a couple of brief comments, Mr Speaker. I think the most important thing is for us to learn a lesson from this space tracking station saga. The lesson is that such sites can be protected from the beginning by very simple mechanisms, as I have been fortunate enough to observe in my recent visits to a number of national parks throughout Australia. Where people have to walk into a site, it is less likely to be vandalised; and, the further people walk in, the greater the respect for such properties.
The simple methodology that was available to the people who were looking after the space station under Federal jurisdiction - who are, by and large, the same people who are looking after it now, although under a different administration - is the necessity of simply fencing off, putting gates in and keeping people further away from accessing such spots in their vehicles. Such methodologies can easily take into account people who are invalided, or something along those lines. Such gates can have locks, and keys can be made available to people who have a legitimate reason for entering an area. I have seen that sort of facility available to people in other spots in Australia.
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