(Adopted October 2014)
Principles
The Queensland Greens believe that:
1. Tourism is an important service industry and provides a valuable opportunity to protect and enhance our natural and cultural heritage while providing significant employment.
2. The ecological sustainability of the tourism industry should be maximised and the impacts of tourism on the natural environment and cultural heritage should be appropriately managed.
3. The needs of the tourism industry must be balanced with the needs and wellbeing of the communities in which tourism businesses operate.
4. Tourism is an important contributor to the state’s economy and employment.
5. The Great Barrier Reef, due to its World Heritage significance and spectacular beauty, and our coastal marine parks are of vital importance to tourism and needs to be protected.
Aims
The Queensland Greens will:
1. Identify, with public participation and through competent ecological assessments land suitable for tourism development.
2. Enhance network and participatory mechanisms for public participation in tourism planning and decision making at local, regional and state levels.
3. Establish an accreditation system to assess 'eco-tourism' activities to ensure only those operators who satisfactorily minimise impacts on and contribute positively to the environment may be registered as such.
4. Provide education, mentoring, service and tourism business training and capacity building to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to enable community controlled tourism ventures in areas where there is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander historical and cultural heritage.
5. Ensure that tour operators who use public lands are required to lodge a bond and a Plan of Management with the State Authority and contribute to the up-keep and restoration of those areas.
6. Upgrade the Queensland urban, regional and rural public transport systems, so that they are capable of providing an integrated and affordable world class service appropriate to tourism, as well as serving the Queensland population.
7. Investigate the best way to integrate state wide and international transport systems (e.g. aviation, rail and cruise ship industry) and to assess the most appropriate and sustainable means of transport that enhance and make accessible tourist destinations in Queensland.
8. Work with the community sector to develop tourist destinations in publicly accessible places that are also accessible in other ways (e.g. disability-friendly, GLBTI friendly, pet-friendly, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community controlled, eco-accredited).
10. Ensure that all tourism developments and activities are subject to competent Environmental Impact Assessment and public participation processes and that any other industrial development be assessed for the impacts it may have to tourism in the local area.
11. Require new facilities to be landscaped with local species where appropriate and to practice effective pollution control, water and energy conservation, and waste management.
13. Strengthen the laws and regulations that protect historical buildings and sites, developing a sympathetic tourism plan to showcase these areas and aid their preservation.
14. Ensure there is no reduction to declared marine parks, wetlands, and fish nurseries. Of special importance is the Great Barrier Reef which provides tens of thousands of jobs to Queenslanders.
15. Ensure developments which would exclude the public from public areas, for example those which alienate people from beaches and foreshores or industrialisation of rural or sensitive ecologies that provide tourist destination to view wildlife are not approved.