In November 2018, on behalf of ASH, Margaret Moorhouse reported (twice) to Minister Enoch’s office staff that the public expects: ​

If you are lucky enough to get a written response to your letter to a Queensland government minister, it is likely to be a set of cobbled-together pre-approved paragraphs that do not answer your questions; contrary to the values and principles set out in the public service codes. 

See links below for Queensland Public Service Code and Queensland Public Service writing style.  
Contrary to the public service codes, the ministerial form letter discussed below (Nov-Dec 2018) is clearly designed to fudge the definition of ‘’national park’’ without admitting it was the Palaszczuk Labor Government using a changed definition by stealth, and without public consultation. ​

Most shocking of all, key people, now employed in the Department of Environment to bulldoze a path for specific private businesses, have neither qualifications nor interest in protecting natural areas. These Labor Government  employees are serving private interests, while we pay their public servant salaries.

• The Queensland Parks and Wildlife Department has disrespected the history of national parks and the public-spirited men and women who founded the national parks movement and worked through their lives to establish individual national parks. 
• The Queensland Parks and Wildlife Department acts as if the world began five years ago - with the Newman amendments to the NCA - dismissing 110 years of successive Queensland governments holding in trust these most precious of landscapes and special places of richest biodiversity.
• In November an Executive Director of QPWS dismissed the 110 year-old national park concept (and the Cardinal Principle of national park management) as ‘just ideology’ (November 2018).

Environment Minister Enoch has been strangely silent in the context of her staff exhibiting disrespect for national parks and those who would defend them; leaving DITID Minister Kate Jones and billionaire Brett Godfrey to run the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Department and ruin the peoples’ national parks.  ​

​ 
NATIONAL PARKS ARE NOW “NATIONAL PARK” IN NAME ONLY.

Not just because it was a promise made over and over, but because: ​

​​It is clear from parliamentary records that Labor MPs in opposition were well aware of the implications of each Newman amendment. HERE ARE THE WORDS OF BILL BYRNE MP (Labor, in opposition): ​

Breaking a pre-election promise, the Palaszczuk government innovated the Nature Conservation Act to allow Big Tourism on Hinchinbrook Island (as boasted by Innovation Minister Kate Jones on ABC TV).

Big Tourism disrespects village communities and their sustainable lifestyle and economy. Big Tourism would rob Cardwell, Lucinda and Dungeness of their economic and social connections with one of the world’s greatest treasures, and their greatest treasure, Hinchinbrook Island.

Hinchinbrook Island’s wilderness value benefits Cardwell by generating tourism business for locals – but only while it remains a non-residential and low-visitation destination.
​
Ends

CONTACT: Margaret Moorhouse (Mob) 0427 724 052 email: hinchinbrookforever@gmail.com
 
Photos:
White shoes – Hinchinbrook Campaign postcard 1990s - ASH files 
Black shoes –"Former rivals Geoff Dixon and Brett Godfrey partner in walking tourism venture"   Australian Financial Review Magazine 24 Nov 2016 

Queensland Government wants built accommodation OUTSIDE resort lease – on self-reliant WILDERNESS walk!   
The last time we called HANDS OFF HINCHINBROOK! was in the 1990s – to protect Hinchinbrook Island from the depredations of white shoe brigader Keith Williams. Williams wanted track hardening of the Thorsborne Trail, rock walled harbours and other built infrastructure on Hinchinbrook Island - outside the resort lease.