The idea that you can wander around our conservation estate for free is, of course, nuts.
Like the various charges that we have placed on tourists, whether it be at the border, or potentially in a hotel with a bed tax, the simple truth is if we got our act together in terms of marketing and seat capacity to the country, people would be happy to pay them.
Why? Because everyone pays for everything all over the world and if post-Covid travel has taught us anything, it's that you can basically rob a tourist blind and they are still happy to pay.
That’s before you get to the bit where our dollar is so pathetic that most people coming here can't believe what they get on the exchange rate.
But as part of the conservation announcement over last weekend what we also got was New Zealand's other great problem – the negative reaction.
As much as we love our open spaces and clean air and national parks you have never seen a group of people more determined not to have anyone touch them.
God forbid we should open the place up to a bit more business. We have seen it for years in the RMA and groups like Forest & Bird, who must have spent millions on lawyers in the environment court looking not to change anything.
The Quiet Sky group at Waiheke and various other locations are determined never to see a chopper polluting their environment ever again.
There is this default position whereby we are happy to be left alone, we don’t like interlopers, intruders or *ick* tourists. And we certainly don't want them tramping over our stuff, far less *ick* landing a helicopter and then tramping over our stuff.
We don't like cruise ships either so we have made them ruinously expensive to park here. So, they don’t.
Yay, a win for the greenies.
What we do like though is lots more pay, lots more hospital beds, much better education, lots of welfare and generous dollops of free stuff, all paid for by the money tree in Wellington.
The fact tourism, the conservation estate, ships and rich Americans in E130's pay for a lot of it doesn’t seem to have registered.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
Why? Because everyone pays for everything all over the world and if post-Covid travel has taught us anything, it's that you can basically rob a tourist blind and they are still happy to pay.
That’s before you get to the bit where our dollar is so pathetic that most people coming here can't believe what they get on the exchange rate.
But as part of the conservation announcement over last weekend what we also got was New Zealand's other great problem – the negative reaction.
As much as we love our open spaces and clean air and national parks you have never seen a group of people more determined not to have anyone touch them.
God forbid we should open the place up to a bit more business. We have seen it for years in the RMA and groups like Forest & Bird, who must have spent millions on lawyers in the environment court looking not to change anything.
The Quiet Sky group at Waiheke and various other locations are determined never to see a chopper polluting their environment ever again.
There is this default position whereby we are happy to be left alone, we don’t like interlopers, intruders or *ick* tourists. And we certainly don't want them tramping over our stuff, far less *ick* landing a helicopter and then tramping over our stuff.
We don't like cruise ships either so we have made them ruinously expensive to park here. So, they don’t.
Yay, a win for the greenies.
What we do like though is lots more pay, lots more hospital beds, much better education, lots of welfare and generous dollops of free stuff, all paid for by the money tree in Wellington.
The fact tourism, the conservation estate, ships and rich Americans in E130's pay for a lot of it doesn’t seem to have registered.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
5 comments:
Why persons go way out of the way and are willing to pay to view Cathedarl Cove is beyond me. Far more grand sites available on the Auckalnd west coast ( although when exercised the Dead of Acknowledgement will likely block some)
Enjoy it while you can. Once all DoC land is returned to Iwi we will all pay, apart from a privileged few.
Don’t the tourists pay for accommodation, transport, food and heaps of other things while they’re here?
Maybe like the Japanese sailors I saw in my local Wellington bar tonight, buying beer and chips and gravy they were helping our local economy?
FFS look at the bigger picture,
New Zealand as it is apparently still called has appeal because of its outdoors attractions. It is a long way from anywhere and there is a cost to get here that many will pay. There are other destinations that have mountains and the great outdoors so there has to be a special reason to come here as a tourist, unique wildlife (birds) . There are, as we all know, many hidden charges in fees and charges in other countries. There is a whiff of us being so special that the tourist mugs will just pay up...in fact we would rather many did not come at all as we would rather be ''unspoiled''. There is an anti-tourist feel about this and, yes, I am perfectly aware that other countries and cities have brought in charges to try to limit tourist inflows. But the ''we will penalise the mug pests'' feel about it all caused me to flag visits to some places and go to others that I found quite pleasant options. But that's only my view.
So, who's going to administer the entry fee to tourist hot spots and where do you think that money will end up?
And how can you even define what is a tourist hot spot?
Suddenly a multitude of "guardians" will pop up at all entrances to public land demanding to see identification and arbitrarily charging fees?
Is that the type of third world corruption you think NZ should try to emulate?
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