THE Easter Sunday tragedy at Port Campbell should never have happened, according to Member for Polwarth Richard Riordan.
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He said the state government needed to take immediate action and fund the implementation of support staff at tourism attractions along the Great Ocean Road to ensure people remained safe.
"You've got three guys in puffer jackets whose job it is to look after the birds and the grasses and no one there to manage the people," Mr Riordan said.
"That terrible tragedy could have happened again the next day because there is just nothing in place to manage the people.
"We're putting hundreds of thousands of people into an environment they don't understand and for some bizarre, stupid, inexplicable reason we don't acknowledge that."
Mr Riordan said the lives of visitors and locals who volunteer to protect them were being put at risk by the government's inaction.
"If we were properly supervising and controlling people, this wouldn't have been allowed to happen," he said.
"The system down there is so inadequate."
Mr Riordan said there were 15,000 people visiting the region each day at peak times and there had to be measures in place to manage these influxes.
He said he believed the solution was to charge for parking at attractions.
"Parking fees are the solution," he said.
"It's simple and it's easy but the government just refuses to do it."
Mr Riordan said the money made from parking fees could then be invested into infrastructure and staff to act as hosts to visitors to the area.
He said the pressure placed on people who volunteered for the Port Campbell Surf Life Saving Club, SES and the local ambulance service was unacceptable.
"We've got volunteers generally traumatised by some of the work they have to do."
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