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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (23 May) . . Page.. 1769 ..

Mr Speaker, there are two other matters I wish to raise. The first is the importance of involving the private sector operators, and the wider ACT community, in any further development of nature based tourism in the Territory. The ACT parks system is an important community asset, as well as a potential resource for commercial usage. Members may be interested to know that there are already over a dozen commercial nature based tourism operators in the ACT. These are mostly small firms, but they provide valuable services to residents and tourists, and a small but growing contribution to the ACT economy. In any further development of nature based tourism we need to make sure that the private sector is able to be involved. We also need to keep the wider community involved. The Parks Service late last year released a marketing Strategy and Options Plan which was given wide community consultation, and I expect any further plans will be given similar distribution for community comment and input.

The second issue follows from the first, and that is the Government's commitment to maintaining conservation as a primary objective. I, and I'm sure I speak for all Canberrans, are justifiably proud of our parks system. We all want to be able to enjoy it into the future, and to have it for our children and our children's children. To attain this we need to make sure that we retain conservation of this magnificent resource as a primary focus for any further development of nature based tourism. We welcome visitors, but we don't want to have the unfortunate environmental degradation so apparent in other jurisdictions where commercial exploitation has been allowed to run ahead of the carrying capacity of the land. This Government is committed to putting the environment first.

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