Oh what a surprise…
Key stakeholders expected the near-threefold increase in the foreign tourist levy last year to feed into cash-starved tourism and conservation efforts, but the vast majority is beefing up the Government’s own books.
Budget documents reveal the Government is banking up to $139 million a year from International Visitor Levy (IVL) revenue, paid by about 60% of international visitors, which was lifted a year ago from $35 to $100.
IVL ministers (Minister of Finance Nicola Willis, Minister for Tourism and Hospitality Louise Upston and Minister of Conservation Tama Potaka) decided in Budget 2025 to allocate $55m a year from the IVL pot to new spending in conservation and $35m to new spending in tourism.
This is from an estimated annual IVL pot of $229m, though this may have been revised down to $190m a year due to fewer-than-expected numbers.
This means at least $100m a year, and up to $139m a year, is flowing back to the Crown in the form of a funding switch: swapping IVL money for Crown spending.
This money is supposed to offset the damage and gridlock caused to our infrastructure from hyper tourism, taking that money and pocketing it is totally unacceptable.
Why are they allowed to get away with this?
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” Why are they allowed to get away with this? ”
The sleepy hobbits and their soft corruption free market is how.
” Government robs hyper tourism tax. ”
What ‘government’? Do you mean the charade that’s the neoliberal gangster clan that no one seems to be able to see, hear, smell or comprehend and yet [it] has enormous power and restrictive influence over us, unless you’re super rich of course. Then you’re ok. If you’re sorted, you’re ok.
If you’re the sort of person who genuinely wants to understand today’s politics and why it looks and sounds like a gangster clan of cluster fuckers but don’t know where to begin with your research then read this for a start. It’s UK centric but then thatcherism or reagonomics or rogernomics has it’s own -isms but they’re all the same thing. They’re all neoliberal.
Buy this and read it and come to know your enemy.
The Invisible Doctrine
The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How It Came To Control Your Life)
Peter Hutchison George Monbiot
” A short anatomy of neoliberalism that shatters its founding myths and points the way to an alternative system
This book is dynamite’ – Caroline Lucas | ‘Fantastic’ – Mark Ruffalo
We live under an ideology that preys on every aspect of our lives: our education and our jobs; our healthcare and our leisure; our relationships and our mental wellbeing; the planet we inhabit – the very air we breathe. So pervasive has it become that, for most people, it has no name. It seems unavoidable, like a natural law.
But trace it back to its roots, and we discover that it is neither inevitable nor immutable. It was conceived, propagated, and then concealed by the powerful few. Our task is to bring it into the light—and to build a new system that is worth fighting for.
Neoliberalism. Do you know what it is?”
Heard of George Monbiot?
He has forty years of journalistic experience under his hat, he’s a regular on The Guardian and he’s fucking brilliant.
The thing that we think of as being our government isn’t that. Seriously, it isn’t a government. We need to think differently about what we perceive as governance. We need to think differently about our role in that governance. We need to view our ability to get away with such a casual attitude to something as important as voting with huge suspicion. We need to equally view ourselves and our responsibilities to the maintenance of our beautiful AO/NZ from an entirely different perspective and to do that all we need to do is still ourselves and think outside what you see, hear and experience. Question every single atom of the gangster clan’s actions while they pretend they’re your servants and your governance. I always remember what Vivienne Westwood said about the Twin Towers attack. She was there at the time.
” I never saw a terrorist attack. I saw a demolition job. ” Well, I don’t see governance. I see dodgy fuckers doing crooked shit.
https://www.national.org.nz/team/carlbates