Election 2016: Southern Tasmania tourism precinct study federal cash pledge
A proposal to make Lake Geeves more accessible to tourists has attracted a $70,000 Coalition pledge to fund a study.
The Coalition has announced it will stump up $70,000 to see how much extra tourist demand a Lake Geeves track could generate for the region.
Huon Valley Council wants to build a 2.5km extension off an existing track to give hikers a view of Lake Geeves and Federation Peak in the remote South West National Park.
Tasmanian Liberal Senator Richard Colbeck told 936 ABC Hobart while the view was the main attraction, the $70,000 was to kick-start the creation of a tourism precinct in the region.
"Seven-hundred-metre vertical cliffs off Lake Geeves 500 metres from where you're standing is quite a spectacular thing to look at, and it just provides an additional reason for people to come to Tasmania," he said.
The demand study would indicate whether a feasibility study should follow.
Former Huon Valley Councillor Ken Studley said the demand-study funding was a great start.
"The demand study is what's required to get the ball rolling to make sure the numbers are there for feasibility to proceed, so that something as big as this is actually going to work so no money is being wasted," he said.
Mr Studley said accommodation and other assets could build on the existing infrastructure around other attractions like the Hartz Mountains, the Tahune Airwalk with the hope that the Huon Valley could be more than just a day-trip destination for tourists.
"[The Lake Geeves track] would then be the catalyst to get significant accommodation and tourism activities in what would become the great southern wilderness precinct, if you like," he said.
"There's the opportunity for all sorts of activities, from mountain biking or white water rafting or bushwalking."
But former Australian Greens leader Bob Brown has criticised the funding pledge as a waste of money.
Mr Brown doubts the project would be approved, saying it "flies in the face" of United Nations request to protect Tasmania's World Heritage Area.
"It is pure wilderness and as remote as anywhere in the south-west from roads, settlements, logging and dams," he said.