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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (20 June) . . Page.. 1965 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

We are being accused all the time of having a mind-set over here about profit and money and so on. I suggest to them that they have a few adjustments to make to their own mind-set. The mere fact that you save money in an area by doing things better, or at least differently, does not mean that you are not committed towards work in that area; that you are not committed towards protection of the environment; that your commitment in those areas is diminished because you do not spend as much money in those areas. That is a very simplistic approach which cannot be sustained if you look at it very closely. You can do better. In fact, every government since the beginning of self-government has had to do better, and I think "better" is an appropriate word. We have done better in most areas with less money.

We have not thrown the environment on the scrap heap because we have had to save money across the board in departments in which the environment has been located, including the Department of the Environment, Land and Planning, as it then was, and its predecessors. We have not threatened other actions in the area of government activity because we have needed to save money in those areas. I think that for the most part - there have been some exceptions, but for the most part - governments in this Territory since the beginning have been able to develop smarter, better ways of doing things. We certainly do not necessarily protect the environment or advance any other area of government activity merely because we retain large numbers of people in designated departments doing particular jobs.

Mr Speaker, I think that this Government response to the report of the Economic Development and Tourism Committee on the expansion of nature-based tourism in the Territory is a good response. Ms Horodny made the point in her remarks that those nature reserves are not primarily for the tourism industry, and that is true. She also said that the intrusion of people into those areas can be for the purpose of learning about the environment that we are seeking to preserve. I think I would depart slightly from her view on that subject. I do not think that we can say that those who wish to enter nature reserves and use the facilities there must do so only for the sake of learning about the environment, although that may be an incidental consequence of their presence in those areas. It also has to be for the purpose, I would suggest, of allowing people to engage in recreational activities in those areas.

Ms Horodny: What, jet skis?

MR HUMPHRIES: Not necessarily jet skis. There are all sorts of ways that people can enjoy themselves in national parks and nature reserves. I would suggest to you that most people who use them do so for recreational purposes, not because they are necessarily learning about particular botanical specimens in those parks or because they want to study water quality or anything of that kind. They are there, very often, for purely recreational purposes. I would suggest that a focus on those national parks and nature reserves purely as an educational resource is a slightly limited and unnecessarily restrictive view about the way in which they work. I would hope that there is no conflict. I think the Government would say that it commits itself to there being no conflict between recreational and educational purposes, but one use is not exclusive of the other.

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