It’s not up to taxpayers to foot the bill for the upkeep of iconic tourist sites like the Twelve Apostles, a Corangamite Shire councillor says.
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As debate rages over funding to improve the experience on the Great Ocean Road, councillor Bev McArthur said a user-pays system could be the answer.
“Clearly we’re not managing tourism well. We can’t continue... encouraging millions of tourists to come down here without providing the facilities for them, but also without them paying,” she said.
“I don’t think it’s up to just the taxpayers and ratepayers of this shire to put up the money for the infrastructure that’s absolutely needed, it’s a matter of ensuring that those who are benefiting from a visit to this area… make a contribution to the upkeep and maintenance.
“It’s a matter of doing tourism totally differently in this area. I hope that this shire might be able to lead the way in approaching it entirely differently.”
Cr McArthur said visitors were charged fees at iconic tourist sites around the world. Her comments come after dash cam footage of the Great Ocean Road over Easter emerged showing badly congested conditions.
Cr Ruth Gstrein said she was “absolutely shocked” when she saw the video.
She called on the state government to fund the Shipwreck Coast Master Plan, which maps out infrastructure improvements along the coast between Peterborough and Princetown.
“They need to get behind this because we’ve waited long enough. There is going to be some serious injuries down there – people walking down the road, cars everywhere, children running around – it’s a totally dangerous situation and for an icon of Australian tourism that brings in the number of tourists that it does every year to Victoria… the state government really needs to put their hands in their pockets,” she said.
“I call on the state government to start funding this, get it happening. We’re still waiting for a new toilet block for the Twelve Apostles so many years later – we need the money invested, we need it now, we need it done straight away.”
Cr Simon Illingworth said people were travelling thousands of kilometres to the Twelve Apostles and “can’t even get a car park” and forced to play “Russian roulette with the traffic”.
“There already are people getting injured…. I cannot tell you how many near-misses we are having down in the Coastal Ward. I see them, I witness them myself, I see cars on the wrong side of the roads and so on. It really is bedlam and it really does come down to a lack of funding,” he said.
“In all honesty, if that funding doesn’t come we are just going to see more and more of this. This situation, if it is left… for another decade or another two decades then heaven help us because the numbers of tourists coming down here are not expected to go up in hundred thousand increments, we’re talking about double, we’re talking about multiple times what we’ve got now, and that is the real concern.”
Corangamite Shire’s draft 2017-18 budget lists funding of the Shipwreck Coast Master Plan, including the Port Campbell streetscape, at the top of its budget wishlist for state and federal government funding.
Cr McArthur is not the first councillor to call for a user-pays system at the Twelve Apostles.
In 2016, then-Corangamite councillor Chris O’Connor said a rethink was needed, including the introduction of fees, to make sites like the Twelve Apostles more internationally competitive and to encourage visitors to stay longer.
“We snub our nose at charging tourists a small fee when they are paying fees all over the world,” he said.
He has called for the establishment of a Great Ocean Road Management Authority to ensure there was major investment in infrastructure. He also wants to see a rethink in the way the high volumes of tourists are managed at the site, making it similar to Phillip Island where tourist visits to the little penguins are staggered.
“When you go to see the penguins you buy a ticket and are allocated a time,” he said.