**Check against delivery
Good morning ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for inviting me to be here today to officially launch the Green TEA project.
It is especially pleasing to be here with Julie Collins, the Member for Franklin, who has been an enthusiastic advocate of the program.
I would also like to acknowledge Mayor Graham Bury and Mayor Robert Armstrong for their support of this project.
The Green TEA project is an environmental best practice benchmarking program.
And this is the first one of its kind in Tasmania.
Put simply, Green TEA aims to reduce the impact tourism operators have on their environment.
This of course, makes perfect sense.
Commonsense dictates that if your business relies on the natural beauty of a region, on its biodiversity and uniqueness, then you do all you can to make sure your impact on the environment is as small as possible.
Green TEA will encourage participating tourism operators to implement environmental best practice and then continually assess how well they're doing.
Green TEA will provide operators with the training, mentoring, and support they need.
It will help participants make improvements and advance their business.
Can I also say that this audit will improve both environmental and economic outcomes.
In a region such as this - which relies so heavily on the environment and natural beauty as a selling point - the environmental and economic imperatives are one and the same.
This program will marry positive environmental outcomes with positive economic outcomes.
We should remember this project aims to help reduce water usage, reduce waste and power use.
If you reduce waste, water and wattage you reduce cost.
And there wouldn't be a business in Australia that doesn't want to reduce its costs.
From a broader business perspective, your experience could provide wide-ranging benefits; not only across the tourism industry but across business generally.
Showing that environmental best practice is good business practice is the best way to increase the adoption of good environmental policy.
And Tasmania will be leading the way.
It gives me great pleasure to officially launch to Green TEA tourism project.
Thank you.