Government tokenistic ‘recovery’ forum pacifies suffering tourism in the wake of another bushfire mishandling

Here we go again…

Bushfires lockdown the entire Blue Mountains

The widespread bushfire ‘mega-blaze‘ disaster of Christmas 2019 that was mishandled and allowed to rage and spread over two months, ended up destroying 80 percent of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area as well as many other natural regions of New South Wales.

Dubbed by our sister conservation entity The Habitat Advocate as Australia’s Bushfire Holocaust of 2019, the multiple bushfires through the state, incinerated over a million hectares of precious native ecology.

The Gospers Mountain Bushfire alone was the biggest bushfire from a single ignition point in Australian history, among the world’s 10 largest bushfires on record.  Overall, the multiple bushfires amounting to this bushfire holocaust killed or displaced an estimated three billion native animals (mammals, marsupials, monotremes, reptiles, birdlife and frogs, plus countless macro-invertebrates, vital for the health and survival of ecological communities.

From the beginning of November 2019 through to the end of February 2020, the bushfires completely blanketed the Blue Mountains Region is dense woodsmoke, denying lookout vistas, rendering all outdoor activities for respiratory reasons and for public safety, shutting down the major highways, roads and rail.

The NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service officially shut down all tourism access to the seven national parks and reserves of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area from 11th November for two months.  Similarly and Blue Mountains Council banned public access to public bushland reserves.

This constituted a total ban on all outdoor tourism – bushwalking, rock-climbing, canyoning, and the like).  The lockdown remained in effect for most of the Blue Mountains summer peak tourism season, only beginning to phase re-opening of limited areas from 21st January 2020.

But then the bushfires had extensively damaged the Blue Mountains rail line infrastructure from the out-of-control blazes.  This included large sections of the rail communications and signalling systems, around 50km of high voltage electrical infrastructure, 100 timber power poles and wires and approximately 300 fire-damaged trees near the railway.  So all train travel to the Blue Mountains was closed for further weeks.

For the dependent Blue Mountains tourism economy – tour operators, outdoor recreation operators, and associated hospitality, retail businesses and their staff – the government lockdown has meant no customers, no revenue, mounting costs and dwindling bank balances for months, with little prospect of any return to normality for at least a year.

Once over the initial impact and shock that this lockdown was not going to be short-term as in previous years (2001, 2003, 2013, 2006), local operators began to express their frustrations, anger and financial plight to the media and to government representatives.

Council Stages Sympathy Chat & Cake

Seemingly embarrassed by media reports that local tourism was suffering in the wake of the complete economic shutdown of the Blue Mountains, Blue Mountains Council staged an ‘Adventure Operators Meeting‘ on Wednesday 12^th February 2020.

Of course to mitigate public outrage, this meeting was one of a number staged (see NSW Government flier below).  It was held at Council’s Blue Mountains Cultural Centre in Katoomba and by invitation only.

Actually, whilst the invitation came from Council, the outreach and funding was actually a  construct of the NSW Government’s outsourced Business Connect outfit, which was charged with doing the community sympathy engagement task.

Two initiatives it rolled our were the patronising ‘Business Advisor Sessions‘ followed up by the ‘Surviving to Thriving‘ talk fest series for the more depressed business owners, to obviate to cost burden on professional counselling services.

Blue Mountains Council’s ‘Adventure Operators Meeting‘ was thus as a delegated agent of the NSW Government being in a declared bushfire affected local government area.  So Blue Mountains Council dismissed the event as one of state compliance.

No councillors attended this important community engagement meeting, indeed perhaps because none was informed.

State compliance required that only the meeting be staged so that on paper and in the NSW Government’s performance statistics – post-bushfire sympathy was seen to have been dispatched to the impacted regions.

Public servant disingenuity was palpably obvious on the day.  Thus, outreaching by Council’s junior staffers Patricia L. and talk fest host Tessa H. was by mere delegated agents of the NSW Government seen to care about those impacted by the out of control bushfires.

Patricia L. shun turning up to the meeting, delegating her junior Tessa H. to host the meeting solo of Blue Mountains tour operators financially devastated by the bushfires disaster.

Council’s list of selected invitees was not disclosed.  Only seven tour operators attended the meeting including Nature Trail’s tour director, and according Council’s official follow up notes, there were just two apologies.  No related outdoor gear retailers were invited, nor hospitality traders, nor accommodation providers.

There would be well over a dozen outdoor tour operators based in the Blue Mountains Region from the adventure focused to four-wheel driving, to the more leisurely and road touring focused like Nature Trail.  However, most attendees (13) were government-employed public servants from Council, NPWS (Parks Service), Services NSW, NSW Office of Emergency Management, none financially impacted by the economic lockdowns.

The meeting agenda read, to discuss:

1. Impacts to the industry, given we know you are amongst the hardest hit
2. What assistance is available – including discussion about the shortcomings and usefulness of current offerings
3. What Council can do to assist – broad economic recovery actions, specific measures

Item 1 was introduced only, then the meeting became real yet no minutes were taken by Council staff.

During the meeting, Council staff controlled the discussion which was padded by patronising sympathy and platitudes.

Most of the other government attendees remained silent, probably having been told to attend but not make comments that could implicate any government responsibility or obligations which may not be able to be fulfilled.

A few tour operators expressed the impacts of the economic lockdown on their business trading, outlining their records of cancelled bookings, lost revenues (in the tens of thousands of dollars), of financial impacts to their businesses and also of staff forced layoffs, dire financial situations and mental health concerns and of the bleak prospects for sales recovery anytime soon.  Concerns were also raised about the risk of qualified experienced staff leaving the Blue Mountains permanently should the downturn perpetuate for much longer, so leaving behind an under-skilled workforce delivering adventure tourism in the Blue Mountains.

Much of the meeting became dominated by one item raised by a Council senior staffer who proposed a special measure that unemployed adventure operator staff be gainfully employed to repair damaged bushtracks with a budget of $100,000.  However, the proposal was conceptual only and the Council staffer explained that Council would not be administering this and that no project planning had been undertaken.  It is not known whether this idea ever got off the ground.  It would appear that this was an empty gesture offering false hope.

Most bushland reserves and walking tracks under Council management were either damaged by the 2019-20 bushfires or the recent East Coast Low flooding event during February and remained closed.  This includes bushland reserves at Charles Darwin Walk, Leura Cascades, Mount York, Lawsons Long Alley, Lockyers Track Bell, Mt Wilson, Mount Tomah,  Pulpit Rock, Popes Glen, sections of Prince Henry Cliff Walk, as well as al Council bushland reserves south of the Great Western Highway from Wentworth Falls (Tablelands Rd) through to Lapstone.

A Tokenistic Government Talkfest

Our take on Council’s staged meeting, courtesy of of Tour Director who attended, but could not stomach eating the catered cake is as follows.

1. Attendees excluded the outdoor equipment retailers of Katoomba, which I had emphasise to Patricia L. in her invitation phone call to Nature Trail – interconnected with outdoor operators, their summer sales are considerably down and similarly hurting financially and key stakeholders.  Did Council invite them to attend – Summit Gear, Paddy Palin, MacPac, etc?;
2. The emailed agenda was not followed during the meeting;
3. With no clear minute taker, besides my notes Council’s event’s manager Wendy D. seemed to be taking, there was no recording of impacts to the industry, dialogue and drafting any “plan of action” from this meeting;
4. While discussion went through what assistance is available,  there was little emphasis on “the shortcomings and usefulness of current offerings”;
5. Excessive time (45 minutes of a 2 hour meeting) was allocated to Matthew C.’s proposal for unskilled track repair labour to be drawn from unemployed outdoor operations staff.  The proposal is welcome but the administration and outsourcing hadn’t been thought through – a job priority list, project manager, project plan outline, time frame, project management (why outsourced?), workers compensation insurance, business insurances, risk assessment, etc.;
6. If Council has considered this outdoor operator industry (adventure or otherwise) to be “amongst the hardest hit”, why were not councillors and senior Council management invited and present at this meeting?;
7. Why was this meeting if so important not held at one of Council Chambers meetings rooms upstairs?;
8. Little preparation seem to have been made to offer the meeting tourism marketing options by the tourism manager Justine S. (title: Regional Visitor Economy Specialist) – my suggestions of a marketing campaign specific for the Blue Mountains outdoor activity sector and for Council to represent the industry to NSW or Federal tourism grants for bushfire recovery, were just stonewalled;
9. I left the meeting felling that it was a talk fest that would come to nought – hence my criticism “Is this empty PR (public relations) crap? …”

Summary Report of Council’s Meeting

This is a summary report of Blue Mountains Council’s Bushfire Recovery Meeting prepared by our Tour Director who attended the meeting.  The report is 21 pages so it may take some minutes to download from our website to be visible.

We are not aware of any follow to this meeting by Blue Mountains Council nor from any part of the New South Wales Government.  The meeting was just a tokenistic talk fest with cakes to appease entrusting industry attendees.

A month later on 11th March 2020, the following brief notes were distributed by email to attendees by Council junior staffer Tessa H:

Blue Mountains Council Notes of Adventures Operators Meeting 12 Feb 2020_Redacted

One adventure operator who was not pacified by Council’s chat, cake and scant notes offered the following feedback after receiving these belated ‘notes’ of the meeting:

“This meeting and the resulting outcomes so far have been disappointing. Numerous suggestions were put forward and are not captured in these notes and as a result it is assumed are therefore forgotten or buried.”

We appealed for support in many forms. Some are outside of Council’s influence, whilst others are able to be explored and hopefully actioned by Council:

Your notes should as a minimum put on record our collective priority of a financial stimulus to prop-up the sector whilst we recover and note any efforts Council has made on our behalf to lobby the NSW Govt.

Your notes should also include a reference to the list of suggestions offered to lessen the overheads of these heavily impacted businesses such as but not limited to:

• • waiving of per head nature-based recreation fees for current and/or last quarter (as NSW National Parks have done)
  • waiving of annual nature-based recreation fees
  • establishment of temporary infrastructure (i.e. portaloos) at alternate sites in lieu of Mt York to support the use of sites such as Zig-Zag and Mt Boyce
  • waiving business vehicle rego fees

It should also be noted that as welcome as it is, (Matt’s) scheme supports the guides who service our sector but DOES NOT provide the operators with any financial support. Without the companies the guides will have no employment. For this reason Council shouldn’t be claiming they have supported the adventure tourism sector with this program.

Sadly the meeting appears to have been a hollow gesture by Council and hasn’t acheived anything worthwhile.”

(author not disclosed)

The meeting was thus exposed as a government PR talk fest.  As the expression goes, it was three hours wasted that we’ll never get back.