From: Graham Walkom [mailto:grahamwalkom@gmail.com] 
Sent: Sunday, 29 May 2011 3:55 PM
To: ‘John Coombe’
Subject: Tourism is the Problem, not the solution

Mr John Coombe,

Acting CEO, KI Council.

 

Hi John,

 

Tourism is the Problem, not the Solution 

In view of the request last Wednesday for Council to support your Recommendation “That Council endorse the actions as listed at the end of this report and authorise the Mayor and Acting CEO to continue discussions to achieve positive outcomes on the issues identified and provide regular updates to Council.”, which of course is not as yet a resolution of Council, the SA Econ Dev Board Discussion Paper presented to Council last Wednesday could not be considered anything other than at least somewhat misinformed. It provides no credible references for any of the recommendations and I suspect that some are based on nothing more than well meaning emotive nonsense. I refer in particular to the airport and the power grid issues but the omission of the island’s water supply problems – urban and rural. Council recently resolved to pursue a carbon neutral island policy – this did not get a mention.

 

Whilst I am not particularly well informed on many of these issues, neither am I stupid. I see huge holes in this “double tourist numbers quickly” strategy without first systematically identifying the issues in credible report form, followed by TBL feasibility studies and then the various business cases.

 

I chose the headline above because it is very relevant to KI Council.(as distinct to KI as a whole). Let’s not forget the agenda here – Economic Development! Which of course means destruction and irreversible change of the status quo. That might be good but also may not be. There are many examples around the globe where tourist icons have been substantially degraded or ruined by economic development (read tourism). Virtually all of the world’s problems today are due to overpopulation and directing this population to fragile areas needs to be very carefully considered.

 

I will lob in here some relevant factors from Dr Richard Southgate’s (island resident) proposal for ‘Triple Bottom Line Regions feb ‘08’

“It is also proposed that a structural decomposition analysis be applied in each region based on the IPAT identity. This identity was first proposed by Paul Ehrlich and colleagues in the 1970s to draw attention to the effects of population growth and consumption on environmental impact in the form:

 

Env. Impact=Population x Affluence x Technology  

 

The identity provides a simple but strong conceptual model to rationalise and unify the frequently divergent goals of regional councils, development boards and natural resource management boards. It can also be applied analytically to:

·         identify the technological improvement and efficiency gains necessary to offset the effects of increasing population size and affluence within constrained water and carbon emission budget

·         allow an evaluation of regionally-specific policies and initiatives to tackle carbon emissions and water use.”

 

John, I do not agree with your recommendations that the following items need to be acted on urgently by doubling tourist growth, for the following reasons:

 

Power

We have a power supply authority already charged with the responsibility for power to the island. Remote areas development is pretty much user pays everywhere. Where is the report that confirms that our power supply is unreliable and must be upgraded. I accept that the island wide network is ‘skinny’ but that in itself does not justify upgrading or duplication. Happier maybe if I could see a report on this. The Island’s water issues would surely rate above those of power.

 

Roads

It seems to me we have reasonable analysis already done for this, but from that information we know that Council needs an additional $10 travellers levy pp (or equivalent) to be able to afford to adequately maintain the current road network. If we double tourist numbers as stated is the main objective of the EDB proposal, we would appear to be making Council’s situation far worse.

 

Airport

The current utilisation/throughput of the airport must be less than 10% of capacity. Only one half of the terminal is used for short periods each day. The “backbone” aircraft currently used is the SAAB 340 taking 35pax. Average pax numbers (return)/day is 70 or 2-3 aircraft/day. It appears that passenger numbers could more than quadruple before we had to open the existing second terminal facilities. Suppose we do upgrade the airport and entice larger aircraft – who pays for the ongoings? Rex will be run out of business to support the larger airline, so there won’t be competition and with airport security services needed significant O&M costs will be incurred by whoever is left holding the Airport when the dust settles.

 

Council stands to lose a lot of credibility if we are advocating issues based on emotion rather than objective analysis. A well meaning but often misinformed Mayoral take on an issue must not be the basis or substitute for an informed and considered Council position.

 

Cr Graham Walkom