Conservationist welcomes Government's decision on Ningaloo

Broadcast: 04/07/2003

Reporter: Tom Baddeley

TOM BADDELEY: Thanks for your company. First, the 'Save the Reef' campaign is celebrating tonight, with project proponents threatening legal action after Premier Geoff Gallop blocked plans for a marina at Ningaloo. But are there really any winners from this outcome? With tourism in the region growing by 20% a year, the Premier's decision - with an eye on the green vote - could be just delaying the inevitable. Balancing competing tourism and conservation in the real world is a big ask. Paul Gamblin is the public face of the Save the Reef campaign. Thanks for your time. You're celebrating a victory, but for how long are you going to be happy? I mean, the popularity of the area is surging and there's immense pressure on it.

PAUL GAMBLIN, SAVE THE REEF CAMPAIGN: Absolutely. And that's why the community was so concerned about this proposal - because it wasn't going to address the very real underlying problems at Ningaloo, it was just going to add more pressures.

TOM BADDELEY: But there's still the pressures. What are you going to do about the mounting pressures?

PAUL GAMBLIN: Well, that's right. There are mounting pressures. This Government's taken the first positive steps to address those. It's fixing up Coral Bay's sewerage system, which was a great problem. It's fixing up its boating problems as well, which is great. But the real challenge is to look at the whole region.

TOM BADDELEY: What's your solution? Do you have one?

PAUL GAMBLIN: Well, the solution is to plan first and then establish guidelines for development, rather than the other way around. Back in the '80s, when this proposal was first put up, there was no plan for the region, there were no development guidelines. That's the way things were done back then, but now we've got to do things right.

TOM BADDELEY: But while you're doing that, it's being destroyed.

PAUL GAMBLIN: Well, it's not being destroyed, but it is feeling the pressure. But the last thing we should do is put developments in that will increase the pressure. We need to have developments that will accommodate tourists without putting more pressure on the place.

TOM BADDELEY: So you have no plan of your own. Despite objecting to this proposal, you've had no numbers yourself which would be, in your view, manageable.

PAUL GAMBLIN: Well, no, there is a plan. I mean, the plan, the way to go about things like this, is to look at the whole region, to analyse it, to look at the science, do the good science, get baseline research done - which hasn't been done either - and then to look at what areas could accommodate more tourists. And, for example, one of the things that we've been saying is that Exmouth in particular, and also Carnarvon, are where the bigger developments should be, because the environments are more resilient there but they're still close to really good attractions.

TOM BADDELEY: Well, the Coral Coast proposal was looking at something like a 240-boat marina and 710 units - short-term-stay units - things like that. What would be acceptable from your point of view?

PAUL GAMBLIN: The main concern we had was the marina. That marina - you could say 240 boats, that was an estimate, but a projection... The area was almost twice the size of Hillarys. Hillarys has a capacity for nearly 700 boats, so the capacity for boating traffic was enormous.

TOM BADDELEY: But the point is, it seems to me, that you don't have any idea in terms of what your solution would have been. You don't have any alternative proposal.

PAUL GAMBLIN: Well, we don't have an alternative proposal. There's no one alternative proposal that would solve the problems up there.

TOM BADDELEY: So how best to manage that situation? With camps all up and down the coast?


TOM BADDELEY: With people putting their boats in the water all up and down the coast?


TOM BADDELEY: How best to fix that?

PAUL GAMBLIN: Well, the Government's got to put more management resources in there, and that's beginning to happen, and that's good to see. There needs to be more resources for CALM and for Fisheries to manage the area. But there needs to be better facilities for those camping facilities so people can throw their waste into a receptacle, rather than over the dune behind them.

TOM BADDELEY: So you're not against accommodation of some sort along the coast?

PAUL GAMBLIN: No. Absolutely not. The campaign wouldn't have been as successful as it has been without making the case that development is required there. It's just the type of development that's important.

TOM BADDELEY: Ideally, Mr Gamblin, please paint a picture of what you would like to actually see there. PAUL GAMBLIN: Well, it's not up to me. One of the things we've been...

TOM BADDELEY: But I'd like your view. I mean what would, ideally, you like to see there?

PAUL GAMBLIN: Well, one of the things we've been saying is I'd like to see a rigorous debate about what needs to go on up there, and that debate hasn't happened. The community hasn't had a look-in. We've had to force the door open. It's time the community was allowed to have a say and the region in particular is allowed to have a say, because it's very important to those people in the region that the place is looked after.

TOM BADDELEY: But we've been talking about this for 16 years. I mean, how much longer do you want?

PAUL GAMBLIN: Exactly! Exactly! But the all-important planning wasn't done before the development was proposed, and that community consultation wasn't done as it should have been. It was the '80s. Things were done differently back then. It's 2003 and things have got to be done differently now.

TOM BADDELEY: But time's running out, you'd agree?

PAUL GAMBLIN: Absolutely.

TOM BADDELEY: So what sort of time frame does this need to be resolved within?

PAUL GAMBLIN: Well, Coral Bay's problems have got to be sorted out immediately. And so the community must watch carefully to make sure this Government follows through on its commitments to sort out Coral Bay. And the planning strategy will have a length of time of about a year for consultations, and so the community must get involved, and we are encouraging people to do that. And the campaign is going to be a conduit for some of that input into that process.

TOM BADDELEY: So the end of 2004 you want to see some sort of concrete decisions made about boat launches, about ecotourism, about...

PAUL GAMBLIN: Sooner than that, actually. We want to see the sewerage facilities started, work started, by the end of this year, and some concrete work on the boating facility...

TOM BADDELEY: But that's the only Government announcement, isn't it - that sewerage one? We haven't heard anything else.

PAUL GAMBLIN: Sewerage and the boating. We're still waiting for the EPA to look at the boating facility to see which one would actually work best. We want to see work on that, we want to see results from that as well. And we want to see work on this plan for the region. We want to see some resources put into the region, because it deserves it. It'll pay us back many times over, for future generations, if we look after it now.

TOM BADDELEY: Are you going to press the Government on this? I mean are you going to be...

PAUL GAMBLIN: This is just the beginning. As far as we are concerned, this is just the beginning. This opens up very exciting opportunities for us to really get things right up there. But this is just the beginning.

TOM BADDELEY: Mr Gamblin, thanks for your time.

PAUL GAMBLIN: Thank you.