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Speaker 1: Kiota.

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Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a

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Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. Over the

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Speaker 2: coming weeks, many Kiwis will be heading to our national

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Speaker 2: parks and great walks for their summer holidays. But if

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Speaker 2: you're doing that for a cheap summer break, enjoy the

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Speaker 2: free ride while it lasts. The Department of Conservation is

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Speaker 2: one point sixty five billion dollars short.

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Speaker 3: Every year on what it needs to.

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Speaker 2: Cover its responsibilities, and the government is looking at a

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Speaker 2: number of ways to swell docks coffers. Environmental advocates say

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Speaker 2: an overhaul is needed, but they're nervous about what squeezing

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Speaker 2: money out of public land will mean for protecting nature.

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Speaker 2: And that's without considering what it might mean for your

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Speaker 2: next holiday. Today on the Front Page ends at Harald's

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Speaker 2: senior writer Derek Chang is with us to discuss the

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Speaker 2: changes coming to dock land. First off, Derek talk us

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Speaker 2: through what the Minister is proposing.

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Speaker 4: Well, this is in a bunch of Cabinet papers and

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Speaker 4: advice to the Minister that got released kind of under

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Speaker 4: the radar. The government's announced that it's going to trial

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Speaker 4: charging for car parks at various really iconic sites. They've

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Speaker 4: asked for public feedback on charging access to other sites,

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Speaker 4: which might include Kiwi's, it might include overseas tourists only

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Speaker 4: that they want to know what people think. But the

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Speaker 4: whole system change, and it's going to be a vast

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Speaker 4: system overhaul, the biggest since the Conservation Act in nineteen

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Speaker 4: eighty seven that has kind of been flown under the

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Speaker 4: radar a bit because what's really at stake here is

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Speaker 4: what are the principles of conservation? Will they be changed?

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Speaker 4: Will squeezing money out of public conservation land? How will

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Speaker 4: that affect protecting nature and protecting the environment. And that

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Speaker 4: money needs to be squeezed because Dock the Department of

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Speaker 4: Conservation has a fraction of what it needs to cover

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Speaker 4: its responsibilities, and that's its biodiversity work, that's it's visitor network.

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Speaker 4: You know, there's like almost fifteen thousand kilometers of trails

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Speaker 4: all through the back country, including like really popular sites

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Speaker 4: like the Great Walks or super remote sites in the

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Speaker 4: back of the Tara Rus or wherever, and it doesn't

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Speaker 4: have the money to do that. And the papers that

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Speaker 4: have been released really may be at the unsustainable financial

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Speaker 4: footing that the department is on and the need for

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Speaker 4: more money. Obviously, this is a government that is hell

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Speaker 4: bent on fiscal restraint. DOCS already shared one hundred and

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Speaker 4: thirty jobs this year to meet its savings target. It's

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Speaker 4: scaled back some of its climate change work, It's slashed

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Speaker 4: some of its biodiversity programs. It's trying to meet the

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Speaker 4: fiscal restraint and at the same time, the gap between

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Speaker 4: the money it has, which is flatlining and coming years,

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Speaker 4: and the money it needs, which is billions a year.

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Speaker 4: To be frank, that gap is widening and widening and widening,

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Speaker 4: which means that DOC does fantastic work, but it's falling

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Speaker 4: further and further behind on what it wants to do

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Speaker 4: in the biodiversity space and the recreational space.

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Speaker 2: How much is DOG short every year on what it needs?

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Speaker 4: Well, it gets around six hundred and fifty million a

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Speaker 4: years is annual budget. Eighty three percent of that, or

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Speaker 4: about five hundred and forty million, comes from the Crown.

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Speaker 4: It raises money, obviously, people pay for huts, they pay

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Speaker 4: for camp sites, they purchased concessions. Concessions is like, for example,

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Speaker 4: the Skifields on Rupey, who a very expensive private guided

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Speaker 4: walks on the rout burn. Everything down to like I

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Speaker 4: want to fly a drone in a national park and

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Speaker 4: I need to apply for a concession for that, So

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Speaker 4: it guess money from concessions. It gets money from the

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Speaker 4: International Visitor Levey. That's the tax on foreign tourist which

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Speaker 4: appli to like sixty percent of our foreign tourists. Australians

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Speaker 4: are exempt, some Pacific Islanders are exempt, and that money

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Speaker 4: that charge has gone from thirty five dollars to one

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Speaker 4: hundred dollars in October. The government hasn't really decided on

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Speaker 4: how to use that extra money. It's one hundred and

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Speaker 4: fifty million roughly extra money a year and the Conservation

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Speaker 4: Minister time of Potucker, really wants all of that money

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Speaker 4: to go to conservation, but the government hasn't hasn't said

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Speaker 4: anything about that yet. So six hundred and fifty million

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Speaker 4: a year. Half of that goes to biodiversity, about a

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Speaker 4: third of it goes to the Visitor Network, and the

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Speaker 4: rest goes to various other things. Like the doc leaders

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Speaker 4: at the committee yesterday said that is like a million

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Speaker 4: different it fragmented it systems that they're trying to consolidate.

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Speaker 4: For example, in one of the cabinet papers, it talks

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Speaker 4: about how ideally it would have two point three billion

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Speaker 4: dollars a year to do all this responsibilities. Now the

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Speaker 4: Minister has actually told me that that is only for

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Speaker 4: its biodiversity work. So currently doc spends about three hundred

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Speaker 4: million on buy diversity and at once two point three billion.

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Speaker 4: So it's two billion dollars a year short just for

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Speaker 4: the biodiversity work. And we're not even talking about the

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Speaker 4: visitor network. So on current funding, a third of the

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Speaker 4: visitor network is totally neglected. There's no money for it.

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Speaker 2: We'll get more onto the concerns over land, but I

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Speaker 2: guess most people associate doc Land with the great walks

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Speaker 2: or their holidays or like you said, those backcountry areas.

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Speaker 2: And we are about to go on to our summer breaks.

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Speaker 2: So is there a focus here on getting users to

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Speaker 2: pay more for what they get out of the sites.

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Speaker 4: It's definitely. That's definitely in the documents, and I should

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Speaker 4: stress that nothing has been decided. There's public consultation at

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Speaker 4: the moment on things like access charges for five iconic sites.

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Speaker 4: That's Aldaki National Park. Friends Joseph glacier Kiffikoven for amand

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Speaker 4: or the Tongua Alpine crossing and if its sound, and

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Speaker 4: you know, most of the visitors to those sites are

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Speaker 4: international visitors, and the government wants to know who should

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Speaker 4: be charged, if they should be charged, how much should

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Speaker 4: they be charged? Should it involve Kiwis and the cabinet

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Speaker 4: papers also talk about the principle of paying for the

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Speaker 4: private benefit of being in these places. But you know,

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Speaker 4: principally that's quite shaky ground because you could very well

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Speaker 4: argue that if you drive out to the coast and

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Speaker 4: it's not the private coast and you look at the ocean,

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Speaker 4: you get a private benefit from that. Should you be

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Speaker 4: paying for that? If you ask an average qv on

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Speaker 4: the street, I'd bit ninety nine point nine names. Another

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Speaker 4: time they'd say no. So having to pay for a

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Speaker 4: private benefit on public land is a contentious issue.

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Speaker 5: Hwis as a first right, I think we're entitled because

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Speaker 5: of everything that's been contributed to have access to the bush,

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Speaker 5: and there's no doubt about it. We're trying to encourage

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Speaker 5: a healthy populace and one way of doing that is

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Speaker 5: making it really as sensible people no matter who they

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Speaker 5: are we're one people, one country, and they should all

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Speaker 5: be entitled to it as their birthright.

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Speaker 3: A toilet charge has been suggested as well.

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Speaker 2: Derek, how serious is that proposal.

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Speaker 4: Well, this was earlier in the year where doc officials

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Speaker 4: were making suggestions about how we can squeeze money out

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Speaker 4: of visitors on public conservation land. One of the suggestions

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Speaker 4: was an amenities charge users use of firewood, toilets, barbecues.

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Speaker 4: That's not something that made it into the minister's cabinet paper.

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Speaker 4: Theyre also suggested a conservation tax ring fenced for conservation

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Speaker 4: work like pushing prices up for fertilizer pesticides for example.

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Speaker 4: That's also not something that's progressed. I mean, the government

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Speaker 4: is very averse to new taxes. But having said that,

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Speaker 4: there's a lot of other stuff in there that made

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Speaker 4: it into the cabinet paper by complex things like a

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Speaker 4: biodiversity credit system. There's making use of carbon capture, you know,

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Speaker 4: selling carbon credits on the voluntary in the emissions training

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Speaker 4: scheme and the volunteer carbon market is trying to get

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Speaker 4: cashlest donations. That actually trialed this in funik Faiki last year,

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Speaker 4: where they made almost seventeen hundred dollars in a month

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Speaker 4: just with a payWave at the visitors center saying hey,

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Speaker 4: we need money. Did you enjoy the pancake rocks? How

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Speaker 4: about you donate something and partnering with a whole bunch

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Speaker 4: of different organizations and you know, and this is some

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Speaker 4: way to mitigate the neglect of the back country assets.

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Speaker 4: You know, hunting groups, mountain groups, tramping clubs. You know

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Speaker 4: that they love these huts and they volunteer to go

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Speaker 4: and maintain this hut or that track or clean out

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Speaker 4: this toilet. But if you're relying on volunteer work to

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Speaker 4: maintain that, then I mean, how far.

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Speaker 1: Is they going to go?

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Speaker 3: From July, doc increased the price of Great Warp facilities,

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Speaker 3: hut and campsite prices rose by eighteen percent, except for Paparoa,

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Speaker 3: which was six percent.

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Speaker 2: It was the first RICE review in four years. But

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Speaker 2: now do you think there's a chance we'll see another

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Speaker 2: increase quite sooner?

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Speaker 4: Well, the documents talk about a three year review of prices,

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Speaker 4: and it makes it quite clear, not just with the

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Speaker 4: Great Walks, but at popular sites in general. The funding

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Speaker 4: from that's generate the revenue that's generated from those sites,

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Speaker 4: and does not bridge the gap on what dock needs

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Speaker 4: to maintain them. So again their decisions have been made.

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Speaker 4: But the vibe of these of the direction is that

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Speaker 4: those prices are going to go up. And a lot

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Speaker 4: of the revenue that DOC gets is from overnight trips

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Speaker 4: and day trips, day hikers. They get to enjoy the

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Speaker 4: dock estate and they don't pay for anything. So one

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Speaker 4: way to try and create revenue from that, and we

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Speaker 4: can argue whether that's you know, that's right or not,

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Speaker 4: and whether it should be an inalienable right as a

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Speaker 4: New Zealander to go to these places for free. One

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Speaker 4: way to get them to pay for that is to

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Speaker 4: have access charges. And you know should say the access

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Speaker 4: charges are quite common overseas. If you go to national

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Speaker 4: parks in Australia, Canada and the US, it's quite common

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Speaker 4: to pay to enter Yosemite Valley in the US, for example,

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Speaker 4: or to get a national park's pass an annual pass.

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Speaker 4: New Zealand is an outlier in that we don't have that. However,

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Speaker 4: it's been like a bit of a Kiwi tradition and

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Speaker 4: something that's quite sacrosanct. And there are other examples like

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Speaker 4: in Peru at least a decade ago when I was there.

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Speaker 4: If I went to Machipichu, it cost me money to

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Speaker 4: enter and it cost me money to take the train

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Speaker 4: to and from there. But if I were Peruvian, that

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Speaker 4: was all free. So there are different ways of handling

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Speaker 4: this in some countries to say, wow, some places should

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Speaker 4: be free for nationals to go and others you know,

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Speaker 4: clearly want to make money out of it. Well, I

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Speaker 4: mean making money is probably arguable is trying to generate

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Speaker 4: enough money so that the places can be looked after.

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Speaker 2: Fully support it, specially if it helps maintain and preserve

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Speaker 2: the beauty.

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Speaker 1: Of the national parks you guys have here in New Zealand.

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Speaker 4: The number of tourists that are accessing these places sort

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Speaker 4: of demands are user pays type model five.

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Speaker 5: Dollars, six dollars, even up to ten I think wouldn't

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Speaker 5: be wouldn't be.

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Speaker 4: A big deal.

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Speaker 2: Well, the proposals are out for public consultation, that is,

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Speaker 2: charging for access to some public conservation land and the

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Speaker 2: idea of modernizing conservation land management.

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Speaker 3: First off, what on earth.

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Speaker 2: Does that mean? And what have environmentalists been saying?

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Speaker 4: Well, it's quite complex, but the change to the management systems.

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Speaker 4: I guess it can be. It covers a broad range

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Speaker 4: of things. One is the house that cow concessions are managed.

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Speaker 4: There's four thousand on concessions. They're generally run on a

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Speaker 4: first come, first serve basis. They're undercharged dock charges for

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Speaker 4: processing and application, but the charge only covers a fifth

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Speaker 4: of the costs associated of actually processing. It could charge

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Speaker 4: market rates for the use of public conservation land, but

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Speaker 4: they don't. Basically, a first come, first serve basis model

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Speaker 4: doesn't really take into account whether an activity a concession activity,

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Speaker 4: is appropriate for that land and what value it brings,

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Speaker 4: if any conservation value it brings to where it's meant to,

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Speaker 4: you know that concession is meant to take place. So

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Speaker 4: environmental groups agree that the system needs a massive overhaul.

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Speaker 4: Concession prices, application devices, processing fees all have to reflect

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Speaker 4: the costs of going through all those applications a market

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Speaker 4: rate for using public conservation land. The minister also wants

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Speaker 4: to charge mining companies rental fees, which is common again overseas,

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Speaker 4: but which mining companies in New Zealand don't have. He

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Speaker 4: also wants to increase the bond that mining companies pay.

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Speaker 4: This about eighty mining operations, exploratory or otherwise on public

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Speaker 4: conservation land. He wants them to pay a high bond

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Speaker 4: for any remedial work to repair any damage from the

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Speaker 4: mining operation. At the moment that costs. You know, it

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Speaker 4: hasn't moved for a long time, and it's fair to

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Speaker 4: say that any business activity of commercial operation on public

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Speaker 4: conservation land is severely undercharged. Those commercial operators should probably

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Speaker 4: expect those fees to go up. When that would happen,

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Speaker 4: it's probably a few years away. The public consultation process

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Speaker 4: at the moment finishes in February. The Minister will then

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Speaker 4: make decisions later in the year and bring forward an

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Speaker 4: amendment builder to alter the Conservation Act. But really what's

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Speaker 4: underpinning the concerns from environmental groups is this the nineteen

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Speaker 4: eighty seven Conservation Act, which spells out the values for

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Speaker 4: conservation and that is the protection of nature. It also

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Speaker 4: says fostering recreation, and it says allowing tourism, allowing but

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Speaker 4: not promoting tourism. There was a real separation between commercial

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Speaker 4: and recreational and you know, the Department of Conservation wasn't

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Speaker 4: really meant to be involved in tourism at all just

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Speaker 4: only allowing it, and so far is it aligns with

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Speaker 4: conservation values. Squeezing money out of out of public conservation

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Speaker 4: land really pushes the department into maximizing return from tourists

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Speaker 4: who come here and enjoy the conservation space. So the

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Speaker 4: concern is that it's a massive shift in conservation value

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Speaker 4: towards money making, and there hasn't really been any talk

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Speaker 4: about what are the checks and balances in place, will

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Speaker 4: decisions be made, what will they be informed by the

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Speaker 4: latest science, or how much money can be made, what

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Speaker 4: will that mean for our environment. That's not to say that,

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Speaker 4: you know, it can't obviously improve the environment. The min'ster

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Speaker 4: clearly thinks that's the case, simply because doc is so

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Speaker 4: cash strapped, and you know, implementing all of these things

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Speaker 4: will give Dock more money. But that's a big We

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Speaker 4: don't really know, and a lot will depend on the

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Speaker 4: public consultation process.

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Speaker 1: Listen, Ruth, this is a no brainer. Everybody does it

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Speaker 1: around the world. It's long overdue. Why on earth do

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Speaker 1: you guys need to consult on it? Why don't you

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Speaker 1: just do it? I mean, it's not unusual for the

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Speaker 1: government to up charges. They just up charges the other

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Speaker 1: day on the International visitor leaving. So why don't you

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Speaker 1: just do it?

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Speaker 3: So?

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Speaker 5: Okay, good question this one. We actually need to change

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Speaker 5: the law to make it clear that we can introduce you.

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Speaker 1: Yes, so whatch you don't need to ask permission to

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Speaker 1: change the law to change it.

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Speaker 2: Well, the Minister wants Doctor be financially sustainable by twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty six, but we've already spoken about that a best

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Speaker 2: between the amount of money it has and what it needs,

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Speaker 2: and that's only exacerbated by hefty bills, say from extreme

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Speaker 2: weather events. How can they possibly think that that funding

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Speaker 2: gap will be bridged in.

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Speaker 3: Just a year.

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Speaker 4: Well, it's probably not going to be bridged in a

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Speaker 4: year because you know the car fees, for example, that

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Speaker 4: trial is not going to start till the summer of

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Speaker 4: twenty twenty five, twenty six. Any access fee to any

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Speaker 4: place is going to require a legislative change, so it's

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Speaker 4: going to take some time to build up those revenue sources.

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Speaker 4: The documents. One of his cabinet papers also talks about

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Speaker 4: if all of the proposals were implemented, it would still

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Speaker 4: only bring in up to two hundred million dollars a

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Speaker 4: year and a large chunk of that is just from

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Speaker 4: the International visitory. If we think about the shortfall just

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Speaker 4: in that biodiversity, if we think about that two point

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Speaker 4: three billion dollars that DOC wants just to do its

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Speaker 4: biodiversity work, and if we add two hundred million a

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Speaker 4: year onto its annual budget, it's still one and a

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Speaker 4: half billion dollars short. So financial sustainability there is still

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Speaker 4: a giant question mark. But that's not to say that

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Speaker 4: DOC wouldn't be super stoked with the extra two hundred

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Speaker 4: million dollars a year. Of course they would be, and

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Speaker 4: they would be able to do a lot more with that,

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Speaker 4: but that'd still be really short of where it wants

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Speaker 4: to be in terms of the money it needs to

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Speaker 4: help the ninety four percent of reptile species, eighty two

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Speaker 4: percent of bird species that are threatened with extinction, all

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Speaker 4: of the visitor network assets that are depreciating and just

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Speaker 4: being neglected. So this is another part of this strategy

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Speaker 4: is that there's not enough money. So the Minister really

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Speaker 4: wants to hone in on what is high conservation value,

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Speaker 4: and then the visitor network that's the great walks, that's

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Speaker 4: the popular hikes, the Instagram places or whatever, you want

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Speaker 4: to call it, and we'll just leave the rest because

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Speaker 4: not many people go there. And in the biodiversity space,

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Speaker 4: we don't really know what that looks like yet because

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Speaker 4: DOC has been building up this biodiversity planning tool where

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Speaker 4: it can measure the conservation value of this project or

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Speaker 4: this project or this project. But as I was talking

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Speaker 4: to Forest and Bird Chief Executive Nicolatocki, and nature is

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Speaker 4: really complex. You know, there might be a paddock that

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Speaker 4: has a couple of dozen threatened plants in it, and

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Speaker 4: if you build a fence around it and it costs

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Speaker 4: fifteen hundred dollars a year, great, great return. But what

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Speaker 4: about the half a million dollars they spent on killing

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Speaker 4: a stoat on one of the remote islands off of

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Speaker 4: the South Island where there were thirty carcopar Is that

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Speaker 4: a good use of money? How do you weigh this?

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Speaker 5: And that?

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Speaker 4: It's like, I don't know, it's not just so like

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Speaker 4: apples and oranges. It's like a ampewter monitor versus a

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Speaker 4: navy vessel. It just seems like completely different spheres, of

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Speaker 4: planetary spheres of trying to value totally totally wildly different things.

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Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us.

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Speaker 4: Derek.

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Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You

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Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage

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Speaker 2: at enzadherld dot co dot enz The Front Page is

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Speaker 2: produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also

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Speaker 2: a sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front

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Speaker 2: Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and

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Speaker 2: tune in to Morrow for another look behind the headlines.