The Politics of Parks

The Politics of Parks A History of Tasmania’s National Parks 1885-2005 Debbie Quarmby BA (Social Work) Postgraduate Diploma (Public History) This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Murdoch University 2006 Acknowledgements: The author is grateful for the valuable contributions to this thesis made by: Librarians at the Archives Office of Tasmania, DPIWE library, Tasmanian State, Parliamentary and University libraries; The Tasmanian Environment Centre; Interviewees (listed in the Bibliography); DPIWE staff who assisted with maps and data; Family and friends who proof-read and helped in many ways, and Murdoch University, particularly my supervisor Dr. Lenore Layman. Declaration I declare that this thesis is my own account of my research and contains as its main content work which has not previously been submitted for a degree at any tertiary education institution. Debbie Quarmby Contents Page Abstract i Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Part 1 Gentlemanly Accommodations: Politics of Consensus Chapter 2 Naturalists and Tourism Promoters form a Tasmanian National Parks Movement 31 Chapter 3 Success for Tasmania’s National Park Movement 63 Part 2 The Scenery Preservation Board: Compromise and Loss for National Parks Chapter 4 Between the Wars, 1920-1940: The Initial National Parks Movement Wanes 94 Chapter 5 Growing Conflict, Inadequacy and the Florentine Failure: The Scenery Preservation Board in the 1940s and 1950s 118 Chapter 6 The 1960s: The Beginning of Modern Environmentalism and Fall of the Scenery Preservation Board 147 Part 3 National Park Gains Lead to Conflict Chapter 7 National Park Expansion During the 1970s 180 Chapter 8 South-West Tasmania: the National Parks Movement Conflicts with the HEC 204 Chapter 9 Tasmania’s National Parks Movement Conflicts with Logging and Government Interests over Forest Reservation 231 Chapter 10 Tasmania’s National Parks at the Turn of the Century: Environmental, Political and Social Challenges 258 Part 4 Conclusion Chapter 11 Tasmania’s National Parks: Varying Purposes and Shifting Politics 293 Bibliography 298 Maps Locations of National Parks and Reserves 1915 69 Tasmania’s National Parks and Protected Areas 2005 313 Appendix Listing of Tasmanian National Parks and Protected Areas under the Nature Conservation Act 2002 312 ABSTRACT This thesis examines the history of Tasmania’s national parks and protected areas from 1885-2005, analysing the interests, and the organisations and individuals representing them, which have influenced outcomes. Significant organisations representing different and sometimes competing interests have been community based groups, chiefly the naturalist and scientific bodies, bushwalking clubs and environmental organisations; tourism associations, industry interests, notably forestry, mining and hydro-electricity, federal, local and state governments and government agencies, notably the National Parks and Wildlife Service. The thesis argues that the establishment and development of Tasmania’s national parks and protected areas have been shaped by the negotiations, accommodations, conflicts and shifting relative power among these competing interests. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries consensus of interest among Tasmania’s social and political elite facilitated the declaration of Tasmania’s first scenery reserves and national parks. Conflicts of interest between preserving land in its natural state and industrial development grew apparent from the 1920s however, and Tasmanian governments managed park expansion through politics of compromise in which national parks accommodated industry demands. The environment movement that emerged in the 1960s protested national parks’ ‘residual’ status and with federal government support defeated the State government’s plan to build a dam within an area proposed for a Wild Rivers National Park. Following environmentalists’ success in over-riding State government processes to expand the State’s national park estate and World Heritage Area in the early 1980s; the State government strengthened its direct control over the National Parks and Wildlife Service and focused its attention on national parks’ tourism role. Aspects of tourism in national parks are, however, incompatible with the preservation of environmental and wilderness values, which resulted in further political conflict between government-supported tourism interests and the national parks movement. This thesis complements earlier research on Tasmanian national park history by Mosley, Castles, Shackel, Mendel and Cubit by extending analysis of that history to the twenty-first century, examining the role of the National Parks and Wildlife Service in that history since the agency’s inception in 1971, and addressing both environmental and social perspectives of national park history. It concludes that by the twenty-first century Tasmanian national park policy required a framework of social values associated with national parks in which to situate environmental protection as national parks’ primary purpose. - i - The Politics of Parks A History of Tasmania’s National Parks 1885 - 2005 Chapter 1 Introduction A large proportion of Tasmania - approximately 2,477, 314 hectares, or 36.38% of the State, is set aside in formal reserves. Over half of this area - 1, 431, 305 hectares, which constitutes 21.06% of the State, is in national parks, relatively large reserves which are managed for both conservation and recreation purposes.i As a result of efforts spanning nearly one and a half centuries Tasmania has the largest proportion of land protected in national parks and other types of formal reserve generically grouped as ‘national parks and reserves’ or ‘national parks and protected areas’ of all the Australian states. There has been relatively little written, however, about why and how Tasmania’s impressive national park estate came to be, and about the roles governments, government agencies, park activists and other interest groups have performed in shaping and maintaining the State’s national parks system. National parks have, since their inception, served a number of purposes, mainly recreation and nature conservation. But there is an inherent contradiction between human use of parks and the preservation of nature within them, a contradiction that has resulted in political conflict both in Tasmania and elsewhere, notably other Australian states and North America, and the contradiction that is the cause of conflict has yet to be resolved. There are no published works that provide a comprehensive account of the history of Tasmania’s national parks although a range of texts provide insights into the context of that history and some address aspects of the history itself. - 1 - Environmental and National Park Histories Histories of Tasmania’s national parks include social, political and, especially since the 1960s, environmental aspects. Stephen Dovers wrote that environmental history ‘seeks to discover and explain the past of European Australia - a past that has created vast environmental problems for itself’.2 Dovers cites three levels of environmental history: understanding nature itself; understanding the socio- economic realm as it interacts with the environment, and understanding the values, laws or myths that shape these interactions.3 The validity of Dovers’ ‘first level’ is open to question, as it can be argued that nature can be understood only within the context of the meanings people place upon it. Yet, however valid, a belief that the answers to natural resource issues lie entirely within the areas of expertise of scientists trained in the physical and natural sciences, to be complimented or contested by knowledge held only by economists, has exerted a strong influence. It has contributed to what John Mulvaney has identified as a reticence in the humanities disciplines, including history and philosophy, to provide ‘objective data and informed, logical comment’ to discourse on environmental issues, where debate has been ‘restricted unduly to the fields of science or economics’.4 This reticence has only recently begun to disappear. This thesis, which is approached from the perspective of a humanities discipline, is situated within the latter two of the three levels of environmental history defined by Dovers, particularly the third. It focuses on stakeholders’ views of the objectives of national parks, the social values underlying these objectives and the varying levels of support different objectives have received from Tasmania’s changing social, economic and political climate. Kevin Frawley concluded, from his literature survey of 1988, that the history of the national park concept was an under-researched field in Australia.5 Though recent postgraduate theses have extended the relevant research there is little published work which focuses on the histories of Australia’s national park systems, and the writings from which this history derives its theoretical basis extend, by necessity, beyond Australian national park histories. Some of the works originate from the United States of America (USA) where much research and writing on national park history has been produced. Some Australian - 2 - environmental histories, such as Geoffrey Bolton’s Spoils and Spoilers, Drew Hutton and Libby Connors’ A History of the Australian Environment Movement and John Dargavel’s Fashioning Australia’s Forests, inform Tasmanian national park history through their reference to changing community attitudes and conservation campaigns6 Recent social movement

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