The Great Australian Debate: A case of The Great Barrier Reef and how the public and tourism value is constructed within the public debate

Hansen, Danny Salling

4. term

Tourism, Master

2018

2018-01-02

78 pages

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the public value of the Great Barrier Reef are being constructed within the public discourse and in relation to Indian energy conglomerate Adani, while furthermore examining the government’s role in constructing the tourism value of Great Barrier Reef within the public debate. Within recent years the Great Barrier Reef have become heavily impacted by the global climate change, leading to large parts of the reef surface being destroyed through coral bleaching. Although global warming pose a major threat to the Great Barrier Reef, the iconic world heritage site is furthermore vulnerable to domestic impacts such as water pollution, dredging, oil spills and coastal development from the surrounding coalmining industry. This paper aims to contribute to the field of valuation studies and tourism research, laying out the exploration of how public valuing in practice may be examined and understood. The empirical data used in this paper where gathered through a systematic methodological process, leading to the use of qualitative content analysis of official documents and collecting secondary data in the form of online articles from various news media and organisations. Based on theoretical considerations from previous research within valuation studies and tourism research, five registers of valuing is distilled from the empirical material, leading to an explorative study of the public valuation process of The Great Barrier within the Adani debate and the examination of how public values may be conflicting or interrelated. By applying the empirical data to the analytical discussion, this paper seeks to explore the role of the government within the process of how the tourism value of the Great Barrier Reef is constructed, aiming to investigate the government interest and agendas. Furthermore the paper seeks to examine in what ways the government may influence how the tourism value of the Great Barrier Reef is constructed within the public discourse, while in addition explore what that may be silenced within the public debate, examining the governments alleged hidden agendas. With tourism being one of many actors within the Great Barrier Reef landscape, this paper will not address tourism as a whole but rather focuses on the public – and tourism value of The Great Barrier Reef and how those values are constructed within the public discourse.

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