Catholic Diocese of Broome

Most of us acknowledge that it is good for people to recreate, to visit places that offer differences to be shared or natural wonders to behold or opportunities for rest and healing. Such sharing gives us the chance to appreciate the other, and in the experience of a national treasure or an outstanding panorama we can admire the beauty and hopefully, give thanks to God for it.

Such tourist attractions bring not only crowds but a host of others to support them and a massive infrastructure to sustain them.

A glimpse of Broome during the ‘dry’ months bears witness to the enormity of the tourist industry today. Since the beginnings of the Cable Beach Resort in 1988 there has arisen a host of boutique resorts and a notable expansion of hotel and motel type accommodation. In local lingo “the streets and shops are packed to the max”. There is a booming restaurant industry and even if you can’t catch a fish, for the time being at least, you can buy a threadfin salmon on a plate or a mackerel fillet on a bun.

But what are the real benefits of all this activity to the community? And what is the cost to us of any such benefits?

Despite the rhetoric, the tourist industry in Broome and in most places rides on the backpackers’ back. It is not uncommon to go into a Broome restaurant and find a wandering European or an itinerant Scandinavian tending your table. Irish bar girls and German receptionists are numerous. But where are the locals? And where are all these economic benefits leading us if there is no fair sharing, no equity, in the boom? What is the point if the industry worth the most in the life of a town, cannot, will not, include local people.

Without any doubt what Broome most stands for in terms of economic worth is largely unsustainable. Come to Broome to fish the advertisements tell us. What fish? We have reduced fish stocks to alarmingly low levels, a state of affairs aided and abetted by a ubiquitous commercial fishing industry. What was once a major factor in Broome’s life was its uniqueness. Today Broome looks much like any plastic and popsicle holiday town on the Queensland coast. Each shopping centre and every housing development down to the last nasty high-rise defies any notion of unique and helps to establish the port among the nation’s most ordinary and banal of locations.

Land, a commodity essential to every family seeking to make a home, is priced beyond the means of ordinary folk including those deemed to be locals. Does anyone care? It appears not. Added to the hardships already encountered by those who seek to remain in Broome is the withdrawal of standard medical GP services. Try getting in to see a doctor during the Northern Winter and see how you go. Better to get sick in February.

Why is it that some people continue to encourage tourism when it largely benefits only tradesmen who come to Broome from elsewhere to build the resorts and employ backpackers and outsiders who hail from far pavilions? Meanwhile the prices go up and the locals move further out onto the margins.

Is tourism worth all the trouble? When you see a fragile country damaged by numerous outback adventuring carriers, when traditional camping spots become bereft of firewood and trampled by hordes on bush buses, the answer must be a resounding ‘no’.

Clearly the perfect solution to expansive tourism development is equity and shared management involving local people, along with the participation of a community-based monitoring group whose job it would be to protect the common good while guarding that which is unique and pristine. Unfortunately you cannot trust governments to do this. They are simply too susceptible to the vested interests of bankers and developers. Their remoteness from the hard realities of living in the North renders them incapable of worthwhile action.

Broome is becoming a dump when in fact it ought to be just the opposite. It ought to be a highlight for the nation in the area of sustainable living. Like any dump, Broome is becoming surrounded by other smaller dumps - in other parts of the Kimberley – quick-buck investments bathing in the reflected glory of the glitzy but unsubstantial glow that defines Broome today. Is tourism worth all the trouble? Certainly not.