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Vic Parks Camping Fee Proposal

access t CliffCare

24-Feb-2014
8:26:26 PM

I will have to check back over my notes but I don't remember it being 6,000. The figures I was given were a total and then the percentage of them that would have been 'taken on board' due to multiples etc.


IdratherbeclimbingM9

24-Feb-2014
8:39:39 PM

On 24/02/2014 access t CliffCare wrote:
>I will have to check back over my notes but I don't remember it being 6,000.
>The figures I was given were a total and then the percentage of them that
>would have been 'taken on board' due to multiples etc.

The gov logic is still flawed, if they regard 'multiples' as any less valid.
I.e. I wonder if they would duck a second time if I fired more than one round at them?
Heh, heh, heh.

As an aside, I think passive resistance / civil disobedience has a place in society dealings...
~> Wouldn't it be grand if the first person who gets pinged for wilderness camping without paying the new prescribed fee, caused mass demonstrations at the court hearing, bringing traffic to a halt in the vicinity etc!

access t CliffCare

24-Feb-2014
8:45:09 PM

On 24/02/2014 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:
>On 24/02/2014 access t CliffCare wrote:
>>I will have to check back over my notes but I don't remember it being
>6,000.
>>The figures I was given were a total and then the percentage of them
>that
>>would have been 'taken on board' due to multiples etc.
>
>The gov logic is still flawed, if they regard 'multiples' as any less
>valid.

>I.e. I wonder if they would duck a second time if I fired more than one
>round at them?
>Heh, heh, heh.
>
>As an aside, I think passive resistance / civil disobedience has a place
>in society dealings...
>~> Wouldn't it be grand if the first person who gets pinged for wilderness
>camping without paying the new prescribed fee, caused mass demonstrations
>at the court hearing, bringing traffic to a halt in the vicinity etc!

Totally agree Rod. Just explaining the numbers and how they deal with them.

kieranl

24-Feb-2014
9:10:04 PM

On 24/02/2014 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:
>On 24/02/2014 access t CliffCare wrote:
>>I will have to check back over my notes but I don't remember it being
>6,000.
>>The figures I was given were a total and then the percentage of them
>that
>>would have been 'taken on board' due to multiples etc.
>
>The gov logic is still flawed, if they regard 'multiples' as any less
>valid.
>I.e. I wonder if they would duck a second time if I fired more than one
>round at them?
>Heh, heh, heh.
>
>As an aside, I think passive resistance / civil disobedience has a place
>in society dealings...
>~> Wouldn't it be grand if the first person who gets pinged for wilderness
>camping without paying the new prescribed fee, caused mass demonstrations
>at the court hearing, bringing traffic to a halt in the vicinity etc!
Perhaps we could have a camp-in at Buandik and when they ask for the camp fees, ask where the flush toilets, hot showers and drinking water are.

gfdonc

24-Feb-2014
9:37:37 PM

Just put yellow ribbons around the trees and you can stay there as long as you like.

patto

24-Feb-2014
10:04:43 PM

Passive resistance and protest has its place. The problem is those who are affected are diverse and varied (both political and geographically). The are probably more BCF (boatin' campin' and fishun' ) types affected than climbers.

Getting a decent protest together at the Pines would be easy, but that is one of the few places which aren't unfairly hit by these changes. (Honestly $5pp is not too bad.)

Also the bulk of the climbing community seems to be weekend warriors. The amount of unwashed dirt bags with time to protest seem fewer and fewer. At the end of the day most people's protest won't go much further than this forum. (I include myself in this category.)

Wendy

25-Feb-2014
7:29:29 AM

"Following consideration of feedback received from the community and to enable organisations to plan for the 2014-2015 financial year, the revised fee structure will be in place from 1 July 2014."

Hahahaha, sorry, um which feedback did they consider? Perhaps they can publish the abundance of submissions supporting the fee structure?

Maybe everyone who wrote submissions could now write back and ask what consideration they were actually given?

I was counting the whole population of Aus, patto. I know there were more than a few interstate submissions. Maybe they just ignored all of those with a non-Vic address attached as well.

Wendy

25-Feb-2014
7:52:06 AM

Should I send them a grumpy email?

"Congratulations on your highly considered consultation of the community on the camping fee structure. I really appreciate when I do not even receive an acknowledgement of my submission and your outcome appears to ignore the view of the many submissions I know to have been sent. I am curious as to how much community support you found for this proposal from your process. I appreciate that it will be highly successful for the rehabilitation of the Grampians after the latest fires however, as many people will be deterred from going by the exorbitant cost of camping. That is certainly a great strategy to reduce the impact of people.

Of course, these fee do not have to effect me greatly as I live close enough to the Grampians to just drive home. And in preference to paying $50 for a campsite for 2, I will just drive home. And if I didn’t, I would pay for roofed accommodation such as Mt Zero Log Cabins for $60 in preference. I am not against camping fees per se, but these fees are unreasonable and will only lead to further fee avoidance. Maximising revenue should really be about setting fees that people will recognise as good value, feel is fairly shared across all user groups and will thus happily pay. Good luck in recouping the cost of camping that you are concerned about with the decrease in business and increase in policing costs."

chalkischeap

25-Feb-2014
8:22:10 AM

Great news!

I used to feel a little bit guilty about not paying the $5 cost to lie on the ground.

Now that the cost has risen to $50, my conscience is clear :)

maxdacat

25-Feb-2014
9:08:38 AM

Is there any dispensation from the fees for traditional owners or even those who "identify" as indigenous for when they go walkabout?


salty crag

25-Feb-2014
9:12:34 AM

On 25/02/2014 Wendy wrote:
>Should I send them a grumpy email?
>
>"Congratulations on your highly considered consultation of the community
>on the camping fee structure. I really appreciate when I do not even receive
>an acknowledgement of my submission and your outcome appears to ignore
>the view of the many submissions I know to have been sent. I am curious
>as to how much community support you found for this proposal from your
>process. I appreciate that it will be highly successful for the rehabilitation
>of the Grampians after the latest fires however, as many people will be
>deterred from going by the exorbitant cost of camping. That is certainly
>a great strategy to reduce the impact of people.
>
>Of course, these fee do not have to effect me greatly as I live close
>enough to the Grampians to just drive home. And in preference to paying
>$50 for a campsite for 2, I will just drive home. And if I didn’t, I would
>pay for roofed accommodation such as Mt Zero Log Cabins for $60 in preference.
> I am not against camping fees per se, but these fees are unreasonable
>and will only lead to further fee avoidance. Maximising revenue should
>really be about setting fees that people will recognise as good value,
>feel is fairly shared across all user groups and will thus happily pay.
>Good luck in recouping the cost of camping that you are concerned about
>with the decrease in business and increase in policing costs."

Well put Wendy. Send it in anyway and see if you get a reply. Unfortunately I think we all wasted our time with our submissions as they clearly new what they were going to do from the start and the consultation was a farce.


kuu

25-Feb-2014
10:47:18 AM

Extract from "A LADDER OF PUBLIC PARTICIPATION"

Types of participation and 'non-participation'

A typology of eight levels of participation may help in analysis of this confused issue. For illustrative purposes the eight types are arranged in a ladder pattern with each rung corresponding to the extent of citizens' power in determining the end product3 (see Fig. 8).

The bottom rungs of the ladder are (1) Manipulation and (2) Therapy. These two rungs describe levels of 'non-participation' that have been contrived by some to substitute for genuine participation.

Their real objective is not to enable people to participate in planning or conducting programmes, but to enable powerholders to 'educate' or 'cure' the participants. Rungs 3 and 4 progress to levels of 'tokenism' that allow the have-nots to hear and to have a voice: (3) Informing and (4) Consultation. When they are proffered by powerholders as the total extent of participation, citizens may indeed hear and be heard. But under these conditions they lack the power to insure that their views will be heeded by the powerful. When participation is restricted to these levels, there is no follow through, no 'muscle', hence no assurance of changing the status quo. Rung (5) Placation, is simply a higher level tokenism because the ground rules allow have-nots to advise, but retain for the power-holders the continued right to decide,

Further up the ladder are levels of citizen power with increasing degrees of decision-making clout. Citizens can enter into a (6) Partnership that enables them to negotiate and engage in trade-offs with traditional powerholders. At the topmost rungs, (7)

Delegated Power and (8) Citizen Control, have-not citizens obtain the majority of decision-making seats, or full managerial power.

Source: Arnstein, Sherry. R. 1971. A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the Royal Town Planning Institute. April 1971.

patto

25-Feb-2014
10:50:27 AM

On 25/02/2014 salty crag wrote:
>Well put Wendy. Send it in anyway and see if you get a reply. Unfortunately
>I think we all wasted our time with our submissions as they clearly new
>what they were going to do from the start and the consultation was a farce.

The cynic in me figured that the "consultation" was a farce. The document and the proposal was written like it was a done deal. If they were serious about consultation then it would have occurred BEFORE the completion of a detailed document. Instead they had already finished their detail proposal and were simply going through the required motions.

I wouldn't say wasted our time it is better to have tried and fail than not even tried. If there is further controversy they can't simply say they consulted and had strong support for their proposal.


ajfclark

25-Feb-2014
11:02:04 AM

My cynicism was further confirmed when the proposed changes in per person fees had already been implemented at the two campgrounds I use (Arapiles and Catani). For some reason I'm still hopeful that they won't implement the 6 person charge at Catani given the huge impact it will have on families using the place, but I think it will go ahead, especially since even after a 30% fee hike the place was still booked out over the entire Christmas period. Obviously the market was able to bear that, why not whack another 50% on top? Hell, why not keep going until they start getting empty sites...

pecheur

25-Feb-2014
11:19:44 AM

On 25/02/2014 ajfclark wrote:
>My cynicism was further confirmed when the proposed changes in per person
>fees had already been implemented at the two campgrounds I use (Arapiles
>and Catani). For some reason I'm still hopeful that they won't implement
>the 6 person charge at Catani given the huge impact it will have on families
>using the place, but I think it will go ahead, especially since even after
>a 30% fee hike the place was still booked out over the entire Christmas
>period. Obviously the market was able to bear that, why not whack another
>50% on top? Hell, why not keep going until they start getting empty sites...

That's the nature of corporations unfortunately, the only way they can work out what the market will truly bear is by tracking demand. Once demand begins to fall off they'll know what the "price" is.

I'm mildy surprised they haven't increased the Wilson's Prom camping prices more, they definitely cost more to run than bush camping. Then again that'd probably get more of the mainstream family types up in arms and more pepole would notice / protest as opposed to us fringe outdoors groups.

kieranl

25-Feb-2014
12:32:40 PM

This sort of process is almost guaranteed to make you cynical, if you weren't already. I had no expectation that my input would achieve anything other than I can say that I at least tried.
I confidently predict that DPI will now pour vast sums of money into a poorly-designed, poorly performing booking system which will be implemented 2 years late, 200% over-budget and using 10 year old technology.


shortman

25-Feb-2014
12:37:52 PM

On 25/02/2014 kieranl wrote:
>This sort of process is almost guaranteed to make you cynical, if you weren't
>already. I had no expectation that my input would achieve anything other
>than I can say that I at least tried.
>I confidently predict that DPI will now pour vast sums of money into a
>poorly-designed, poorly performing booking system which will be implemented
>2 years late, 200% over-budget and using 10 year old technology.

That pretty much sums it up.

patto

25-Feb-2014
12:38:08 PM


JamesMc

25-Feb-2014
7:40:32 PM

l don't think it's the end of the world. We've had to pay to camp in the Grampians for over a decade Hands up anyone who's paid lately.
They can't enforce it without hiring extra rangers, and I can't see that happening,

f_abe

25-Feb-2014
8:54:20 PM

I can't believe it's taken 9 pages of discussion to get to the obvious - any price change is going to have no impact on anyone's budget whatsoever!

There are 197 messages in this topic.