Esperance Shire president Ron Chambers. Photo: Geoff Vivian.
Opposition to the South Coast Marine Park is costing the Esperance community millions of dollars in project funding, Shire president Ron Chambers said.
“The State Government won’t even talk to the local council to utilise the marine park to look at recognising the opportunities the marine park would bring to this community,” he said.
When asked which opportunities he had in mind, President Chambers mentioned worker accommodation, aquaculture and boating facilities.
“We could utilise the existence of the Marine Park to point out the importance of the worker accommodation project we have,” he said.
“Tjaltjraak aquaculture: we could tie that to the marine park because it is a good green industry for the community.
“Bandy Creek boat harbour and even the infrastructure down at the Yacht Club: I know the Department of Transport are working at replacing the jetty down there.”
Mr Chambers said the administrators of the Facebook group “We Oppose the South Coast Marine Park” had to take some responsibility for this.
“The platform has provided an environment for people to create division and racial tension because it allows anonymous posts,” he said.
“That has continued to drive division within the community.
“It takes away a lever that we could use in negotiation with the Government — we need to be able to identify key opportunities, and I think that group needs to bear some responsibility.”
Mr Chambers said it would be interesting to see how it all panned out if there were candidates for the coming local government elections who stood on an anti-marine park platform.
“With the Buccaneer Marine Parks, once that was enacted [the WA Government] took a working group up there, it was mostly back benchers, who looked at opportunities with the community,” he said.
“It was almost $31million spent on realising opportunities with the marine park.” Instead, Mr Chambers said the South Coast Marine Park had been proclaimed but months later there had not been a similar implementation program.
“I would have thought you would have a planning group sit down and do the planning, then you would have an implementation group to identify the opportunities,” he said.
“We have not seen any of that.
“It would be good to sit with a consultant and look for those opportunities.”
Mr Chambers singled out suspended Shire councillor Gemma Johnston for particular criticism.
“It is a pity that the suspended shire councillor is a self-proclaimed leader of “We Oppose the Marine Park,” he said.
