Tuesday, Feb 02, 2010 at 15:00
Residents of the NT do not have to pay, this is something I have written above. Seeing that most of my family and friends live in the NT, your comment pertaining to them is not applicable. This is not my doing, the Federal Government has come up with it.
Would we be opposed to NT residents, including friends and relatives, paying to visit? No! however if they are just visiting us in
Jabiru they don't need to.
Secondly,
Kakadu is not public land, it is Aboriginal land. It is leased by the Federal Government to be run as a national park. Therefore, the Government needs to pay the lease to the Traditional Owners of
Kakadu and also spend millions on maintenance and
infrastructure of the park, monitoring and research, etc.
Since the fee has been removed the maintenance of the park has suffered due to lack of funds, this has been told to me by park staff.
Jabiru township is a completely different lease, this is something that Anja made very clear.
Google 'national+park+fees' and see how many parks in Australia charge a fee, to be honest it would be easier to find how many don't.
To be honest I don't wish to argue about the issue. There is a minority that won't visit because of the introduction of the fees, but in the grand scale this will not effect the overall numbers of visitors, that is a fact.
Cheers Steve
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