National Parks First and Foremost Belong to Kiwis

National parks are by law the ‘people’s parks” and New Zealanders should have free entry with tourists charged a national park levy on entering the country says a national outdoor recreation advocacy.

“National parks by law belong to New Zealand citizens,” said Andi Cockroft, co-chairman Council of Outdoor Recreation Associations of New Zealand (CORANZ). “On the other hand all international tourists entering could be charged a levy, a simple and neat way to do it.”

Andi Cockroft was responding to a report that International tourists may have to start paying to visit national parks as the Department of Conservation struggles to cope with the tourism boom.

Last year, tourism replaced the dairy industry as the top foreign exchange earner for the first time in five years, bringing in $13.5 billion, compared with $13b for dairy.

“Underlying this is the shortsightedness of immediate past prime minister John Key who as Minister of Tourism often advocated reaching tourism targets measured in terms of visitors. It’s not about quantity, it should be about quality in targeting high spending affluent tourists instead of playing a maximum numbers game,” said Andi Cockroft.

He said the resource whether national parks or other aspect of the infrastructure, was finite and liable to be stretched to bursting point.

“Growth for growth’s sake by numbers is crazy,” he said.

At the same time, flooding the country with low spending tourists was putting pressure on Kiwis’ holiday spots and national parks thereby diminishing the New Zealand public’s enjoyment and quality of life. The folly of allowing ‘shoestring’ visitors such as freedom campers was of low dollar value and with rubbish often left, was despoiling the public’s outdoors.

“The NZ public end up paying for the cleanup,” he said.

Andi Cockroft said the debate on visitors paying to visit national parks was a great opportunity to right the wrong that Kiwis had to pay to visit their own parks and stay in huts.

“The reasoning is simple. Kiwis pay taxes and have already paid,” he said.

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