Tuesday, 12 November 2024

 Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (13:39): I encourage every Victorian to take a trip north to the central northern areas of Victoria, which have some of the world’s most beautiful wetlands. It is unbelievably lush and diverse, full of waterbirds and other native species, but very few international tourists visit there, which is such a pity.

In the 1980s Premier John Cain and ministers Joan Kirner and Evan Walker set out to protect Victoria’s Phillip Island penguins and to set up a world-class tourism attraction, and they succeeded on both fronts. Over a million tourists from all around the world now visit the penguins each year, and that contributes at least half a billion dollars to Victoria annually. We could do the same again; Victoria’s central wetlands have the same potential for a world-class tourism destination. When duck shooting is banned and an Indigenous wetlands tourism industry is established it will have the potential to draw millions of overseas tourists annually to Victoria. Such an industry could offer tourists the chance to see both magnificent native waterbirds and other wildlife and cultural experiences based on First Nations history going back millennia. Surely it is time to step into the future and have these marvellous wetlands available year-round, free from death and destruction, and from there build a sustainable tourism industry. I encourage the government to have the vision and courage past leaders felt able to demonstrate.