The Queensland Government is in the process of handing out 30 year private leases inside our National Parks for commercial development of luxury accommodation.
This is a major change to our National Parks, made without any public consultation.
More information and action opportunities at: https://www.protectparks.net/; National facebook page; Cooloola facebook page.
Private land leases directly threaten National Park integrity. The five development sites proposed for Cooloola National Park include Double Island Point, Poona Lake and near Campsite 3 on the Noosa River. These are some of the Park's most unique and sensitive places.
Private accommodation with covered dining and meeting spaces would provide wealthy visitors and corporate clients with luxury holidays in an exclusive location, destroying significant natural and aesthetic values.
Who is running our National Parks?
Qld. Parks & Wildlife or Dept. of Tourism?
This needs sorting out!
UPDATE APR 6, 2022 — MINISTER RESPONDS
The Minister has replied to the Parliamentary petition that closed just as this one opened. Many here will have signed it. Those that did will have a copy of that reply. If you’ve not got one it can be downloaded at the link below. This includes the text of that original petition. The other documents cited in this update are also on this page.
https://www.protectparks.net/reports-and-documents
Unfortunately, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Minister’s reply does not address the core issues detailed in the original petition.
It does demonstrate the incredibly thin basis of fact and logic upon which this program of National Park privatisation rests. It also raises many more questions than it answers.
We have drafted and sent to the Minister a letter listing issues arising from her response. This letter also seeks a better response to some of the many questions that remain unanswered.
A request for a meeting with the Minister to discuss these matters has also been forwarded.
The Minister’s reply lists a a very limited range of groups that have been communicated with to guide the project development. Experience demonstrates that this communication has occurred to the exclusion of everyone else.
One of these included groups is Noosa Parks Association (NPA). Interestingly NPA is the only Environment group that has given endorsement to this project. Is this a somewhat convenient relationship? Our request to the Minister for a meeting very directly asserts the right of the many thousands of people who oppose this privatisation plan to have at least as much direct input upon its progress as NPA has had? Surely that is both fair and reasonable. We now await the Minister's response to our requests.
It is really important at this time that as many people as possible write/email to the Minister to amplify our concerns about the dire lack of public consultation and our horror toward the project generally. Please use the letter drafts sent to the Minister as a guide. Anything at all you can send is useful, from just a sentence or two to an encyclopaedia of concerns.
And please keep sharing this petition to maximise the number of people we are in direct contact with.
regards
Greg
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