At the EDS Conference Wild Places yesterday, the Green Party leader James Shaw announced a proposed Taonga Levy, which would be applied to international visitors at the border.
“We actually think this is an excellent idea and are pleased that the Prime Minister (and Minister of Tourism) seems open to the proposal. We also note that the Labour Leader has endorsed the initiative at our conference,” said EDS Chairman Gary Taylor.
“The Greens propose a small levy of $14-$18 that would be spent on conservation management and on tourist and visitor facilities. This is consistent with our own advocacy on the need for additional funding for biodiversity.
“We applaud the Government’s commitment to Predator Free New Zealand but clearly there will be much greater funding required to meet the 20125 and 2050 targets.
“And clearly there are a number of front-line visitor attractions that are under pressure from burgeoning numbers that need upgrading.
“The levy would bring in more than $60 million annually and supplement Government revenues at a time when international visitor numbers are rapidly increasing and likely to tip over 4 million in the next couple of years.
“Our view is that the tourism sector needs to see this as an opportunity and not a threat. The sector needs to get more innovative and progressive in its policy advocacy. It is bemusing to us that the sector has not embraced the idea and seems actually to be opposed to it.
“The argument advanced by the Minister of Conservation that a levy would deter visitors is wrong. The recently imposed biosecurity levy had no discernible impact on visitor numbers and this one won’t either.
“I think there’s a great opportunity here for the border levy idea to get political traction and enable us to better funding for conservation and tourism,” Mr Taylor concluded.
During the frantic years of the mid 80’s when the nationalised commercial forestry assets were being sold off to help dig the government out of debt, a small but significant mistake was made.
The old Forestry department had four objectives:
1. Commercial forestry
2. Leisure
3. Tourism
4. Conservation
So when the commercial part was flogged off they should have created a new department focussed on the remaining three. Instead they created DoC, whose sole aim was to conserve.
DoC was saddled with a vast swath of land, some of which had important conservation value but a whole lot had little or no worth at all. No content with that, DoC was also encumbered with looking after all the marine mammals.
Over the years DoC land has been slowly transformed in the minds of the public into ‘the conservation estate’ but in reality at least a third of it has little or no conservation value and may never have even been visited by a conservator since DoC came into being.
My suggestion would be to triage the problem:
1. Grade DoC land into various conservation values: High, medium, low.
2. Open the low value land up for other, revenue generating uses
3. Use the revenue to properly conserve the true ‘conservation estate’
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