Speaker 1: Kiota.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. Over the
Speaker 2: coming weeks, many Kiwis will be heading to our national
Speaker 2: parks and great walks for their summer holidays. But if
Speaker 2: you're doing that for a cheap summer break, enjoy the
Speaker 2: free ride while it lasts. The Department of Conservation is
Speaker 2: one point sixty five billion dollars short.
Speaker 3: Every year on what it needs to.
Speaker 2: Cover its responsibilities, and the government is looking at a
Speaker 2: number of ways to swell docks coffers. Environmental advocates say
Speaker 2: an overhaul is needed, but they're nervous about what squeezing
Speaker 2: money out of public land will mean for protecting nature.
Speaker 2: And that's without considering what it might mean for your
Speaker 2: next holiday. Today on the Front Page ends at Harald's
Speaker 2: senior writer Derek Chang is with us to discuss the
Speaker 2: changes coming to dock land. First off, Derek talk us
Speaker 2: through what the Minister is proposing.
Speaker 4: Well, this is in a bunch of Cabinet papers and
Speaker 4: advice to the Minister that got released kind of under
Speaker 4: the radar. The government's announced that it's going to trial
Speaker 4: charging for car parks at various really iconic sites. They've
Speaker 4: asked for public feedback on charging access to other sites,
Speaker 4: which might include Kiwi's, it might include overseas tourists only
Speaker 4: that they want to know what people think. But the
Speaker 4: whole system change, and it's going to be a vast
Speaker 4: system overhaul, the biggest since the Conservation Act in nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty seven that has kind of been flown under the
Speaker 4: radar a bit because what's really at stake here is
Speaker 4: what are the principles of conservation? Will they be changed?
Speaker 4: Will squeezing money out of public conservation land? How will
Speaker 4: that affect protecting nature and protecting the environment. And that
Speaker 4: money needs to be squeezed because Dock the Department of
Speaker 4: Conservation has a fraction of what it needs to cover
Speaker 4: its responsibilities, and that's its biodiversity work, that's it's visitor network.
Speaker 4: You know, there's like almost fifteen thousand kilometers of trails
Speaker 4: all through the back country, including like really popular sites
Speaker 4: like the Great Walks or super remote sites in the
Speaker 4: back of the Tara Rus or wherever, and it doesn't
Speaker 4: have the money to do that. And the papers that
Speaker 4: have been released really may be at the unsustainable financial
Speaker 4: footing that the department is on and the need for
Speaker 4: more money. Obviously, this is a government that is hell
Speaker 4: bent on fiscal restraint. DOCS already shared one hundred and
Speaker 4: thirty jobs this year to meet its savings target. It's
Speaker 4: scaled back some of its climate change work, It's slashed
Speaker 4: some of its biodiversity programs. It's trying to meet the
Speaker 4: fiscal restraint and at the same time, the gap between
Speaker 4: the money it has, which is flatlining and coming years,
Speaker 4: and the money it needs, which is billions a year.
Speaker 4: To be frank, that gap is widening and widening and widening,
Speaker 4: which means that DOC does fantastic work, but it's falling
Speaker 4: further and further behind on what it wants to do
Speaker 4: in the biodiversity space and the recreational space.
Speaker 2: How much is DOG short every year on what it needs?
Speaker 4: Well, it gets around six hundred and fifty million a
Speaker 4: years is annual budget. Eighty three percent of that, or
Speaker 4: about five hundred and forty million, comes from the Crown.
Speaker 4: It raises money, obviously, people pay for huts, they pay
Speaker 4: for camp sites, they purchased concessions. Concessions is like, for example,
Speaker 4: the Skifields on Rupey, who a very expensive private guided
Speaker 4: walks on the rout burn. Everything down to like I
Speaker 4: want to fly a drone in a national park and
Speaker 4: I need to apply for a concession for that, So
Speaker 4: it guess money from concessions. It gets money from the
Speaker 4: International Visitor Levey. That's the tax on foreign tourist which
Speaker 4: appli to like sixty percent of our foreign tourists. Australians
Speaker 4: are exempt, some Pacific Islanders are exempt, and that money
Speaker 4: that charge has gone from thirty five dollars to one
Speaker 4: hundred dollars in October. The government hasn't really decided on
Speaker 4: how to use that extra money. It's one hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty million roughly extra money a year and the Conservation
Speaker 4: Minister time of Potucker, really wants all of that money
Speaker 4: to go to conservation, but the government hasn't hasn't said
Speaker 4: anything about that yet. So six hundred and fifty million
Speaker 4: a year. Half of that goes to biodiversity, about a
Speaker 4: third of it goes to the Visitor Network, and the
Speaker 4: rest goes to various other things. Like the doc leaders
Speaker 4: at the committee yesterday said that is like a million
Speaker 4: different it fragmented it systems that they're trying to consolidate.
Speaker 4: For example, in one of the cabinet papers, it talks
Speaker 4: about how ideally it would have two point three billion
Speaker 4: dollars a year to do all this responsibilities. Now the
Speaker 4: Minister has actually told me that that is only for
Speaker 4: its biodiversity work. So currently doc spends about three hundred
Speaker 4: million on buy diversity and at once two point three billion.
Speaker 4: So it's two billion dollars a year short just for
Speaker 4: the biodiversity work. And we're not even talking about the
Speaker 4: visitor network. So on current funding, a third of the
Speaker 4: visitor network is totally neglected. There's no money for it.
Speaker 2: We'll get more onto the concerns over land, but I
Speaker 2: guess most people associate doc Land with the great walks
Speaker 2: or their holidays or like you said, those backcountry areas.
Speaker 2: And we are about to go on to our summer breaks.
Speaker 2: So is there a focus here on getting users to
Speaker 2: pay more for what they get out of the sites.
Speaker 4: It's definitely. That's definitely in the documents, and I should
Speaker 4: stress that nothing has been decided. There's public consultation at
Speaker 4: the moment on things like access charges for five iconic sites.
Speaker 4: That's Aldaki National Park. Friends Joseph glacier Kiffikoven for amand
Speaker 4: or the Tongua Alpine crossing and if its sound, and
Speaker 4: you know, most of the visitors to those sites are
Speaker 4: international visitors, and the government wants to know who should
Speaker 4: be charged, if they should be charged, how much should
Speaker 4: they be charged? Should it involve Kiwis and the cabinet
Speaker 4: papers also talk about the principle of paying for the
Speaker 4: private benefit of being in these places. But you know,
Speaker 4: principally that's quite shaky ground because you could very well
Speaker 4: argue that if you drive out to the coast and
Speaker 4: it's not the private coast and you look at the ocean,
Speaker 4: you get a private benefit from that. Should you be
Speaker 4: paying for that? If you ask an average qv on
Speaker 4: the street, I'd bit ninety nine point nine names. Another
Speaker 4: time they'd say no. So having to pay for a
Speaker 4: private benefit on public land is a contentious issue.
Speaker 5: Hwis as a first right, I think we're entitled because
Speaker 5: of everything that's been contributed to have access to the bush,
Speaker 5: and there's no doubt about it. We're trying to encourage
Speaker 5: a healthy populace and one way of doing that is
Speaker 5: making it really as sensible people no matter who they
Speaker 5: are we're one people, one country, and they should all
Speaker 5: be entitled to it as their birthright.
Speaker 3: A toilet charge has been suggested as well.
Speaker 2: Derek, how serious is that proposal.
Speaker 4: Well, this was earlier in the year where doc officials
Speaker 4: were making suggestions about how we can squeeze money out
Speaker 4: of visitors on public conservation land. One of the suggestions
Speaker 4: was an amenities charge users use of firewood, toilets, barbecues.
Speaker 4: That's not something that made it into the minister's cabinet paper.
Speaker 4: Theyre also suggested a conservation tax ring fenced for conservation
Speaker 4: work like pushing prices up for fertilizer pesticides for example.
Speaker 4: That's also not something that's progressed. I mean, the government
Speaker 4: is very averse to new taxes. But having said that,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of other stuff in there that made
Speaker 4: it into the cabinet paper by complex things like a
Speaker 4: biodiversity credit system. There's making use of carbon capture, you know,
Speaker 4: selling carbon credits on the voluntary in the emissions training
Speaker 4: scheme and the volunteer carbon market is trying to get
Speaker 4: cashlest donations. That actually trialed this in funik Faiki last year,
Speaker 4: where they made almost seventeen hundred dollars in a month
Speaker 4: just with a payWave at the visitors center saying hey,
Speaker 4: we need money. Did you enjoy the pancake rocks? How
Speaker 4: about you donate something and partnering with a whole bunch
Speaker 4: of different organizations and you know, and this is some
Speaker 4: way to mitigate the neglect of the back country assets.
Speaker 4: You know, hunting groups, mountain groups, tramping clubs. You know
Speaker 4: that they love these huts and they volunteer to go
Speaker 4: and maintain this hut or that track or clean out
Speaker 4: this toilet. But if you're relying on volunteer work to
Speaker 4: maintain that, then I mean, how far.
Speaker 1: Is they going to go?
Speaker 3: From July, doc increased the price of Great Warp facilities,
Speaker 3: hut and campsite prices rose by eighteen percent, except for Paparoa,
Speaker 3: which was six percent.
Speaker 2: It was the first RICE review in four years. But
Speaker 2: now do you think there's a chance we'll see another
Speaker 2: increase quite sooner?
Speaker 4: Well, the documents talk about a three year review of prices,
Speaker 4: and it makes it quite clear, not just with the
Speaker 4: Great Walks, but at popular sites in general. The funding
Speaker 4: from that's generate the revenue that's generated from those sites,
Speaker 4: and does not bridge the gap on what dock needs
Speaker 4: to maintain them. So again their decisions have been made.
Speaker 4: But the vibe of these of the direction is that
Speaker 4: those prices are going to go up. And a lot
Speaker 4: of the revenue that DOC gets is from overnight trips
Speaker 4: and day trips, day hikers. They get to enjoy the
Speaker 4: dock estate and they don't pay for anything. So one
Speaker 4: way to try and create revenue from that, and we
Speaker 4: can argue whether that's you know, that's right or not,
Speaker 4: and whether it should be an inalienable right as a
Speaker 4: New Zealander to go to these places for free. One
Speaker 4: way to get them to pay for that is to
Speaker 4: have access charges. And you know should say the access
Speaker 4: charges are quite common overseas. If you go to national
Speaker 4: parks in Australia, Canada and the US, it's quite common
Speaker 4: to pay to enter Yosemite Valley in the US, for example,
Speaker 4: or to get a national park's pass an annual pass.
Speaker 4: New Zealand is an outlier in that we don't have that. However,
Speaker 4: it's been like a bit of a Kiwi tradition and
Speaker 4: something that's quite sacrosanct. And there are other examples like
Speaker 4: in Peru at least a decade ago when I was there.
Speaker 4: If I went to Machipichu, it cost me money to
Speaker 4: enter and it cost me money to take the train
Speaker 4: to and from there. But if I were Peruvian, that
Speaker 4: was all free. So there are different ways of handling
Speaker 4: this in some countries to say, wow, some places should
Speaker 4: be free for nationals to go and others you know,
Speaker 4: clearly want to make money out of it. Well, I
Speaker 4: mean making money is probably arguable is trying to generate
Speaker 4: enough money so that the places can be looked after.
Speaker 2: Fully support it, specially if it helps maintain and preserve
Speaker 2: the beauty.
Speaker 1: Of the national parks you guys have here in New Zealand.
Speaker 4: The number of tourists that are accessing these places sort
Speaker 4: of demands are user pays type model five.
Speaker 5: Dollars, six dollars, even up to ten I think wouldn't
Speaker 5: be wouldn't be.
Speaker 4: A big deal.
Speaker 2: Well, the proposals are out for public consultation, that is,
Speaker 2: charging for access to some public conservation land and the
Speaker 2: idea of modernizing conservation land management.
Speaker 3: First off, what on earth.
Speaker 2: Does that mean? And what have environmentalists been saying?
Speaker 4: Well, it's quite complex, but the change to the management systems.
Speaker 4: I guess it can be. It covers a broad range
Speaker 4: of things. One is the house that cow concessions are managed.
Speaker 4: There's four thousand on concessions. They're generally run on a
Speaker 4: first come, first serve basis. They're undercharged dock charges for
Speaker 4: processing and application, but the charge only covers a fifth
Speaker 4: of the costs associated of actually processing. It could charge
Speaker 4: market rates for the use of public conservation land, but
Speaker 4: they don't. Basically, a first come, first serve basis model
Speaker 4: doesn't really take into account whether an activity a concession activity,
Speaker 4: is appropriate for that land and what value it brings,
Speaker 4: if any conservation value it brings to where it's meant to,
Speaker 4: you know that concession is meant to take place. So
Speaker 4: environmental groups agree that the system needs a massive overhaul.
Speaker 4: Concession prices, application devices, processing fees all have to reflect
Speaker 4: the costs of going through all those applications a market
Speaker 4: rate for using public conservation land. The minister also wants
Speaker 4: to charge mining companies rental fees, which is common again overseas,
Speaker 4: but which mining companies in New Zealand don't have. He
Speaker 4: also wants to increase the bond that mining companies pay.
Speaker 4: This about eighty mining operations, exploratory or otherwise on public
Speaker 4: conservation land. He wants them to pay a high bond
Speaker 4: for any remedial work to repair any damage from the
Speaker 4: mining operation. At the moment that costs. You know, it
Speaker 4: hasn't moved for a long time, and it's fair to
Speaker 4: say that any business activity of commercial operation on public
Speaker 4: conservation land is severely undercharged. Those commercial operators should probably
Speaker 4: expect those fees to go up. When that would happen,
Speaker 4: it's probably a few years away. The public consultation process
Speaker 4: at the moment finishes in February. The Minister will then
Speaker 4: make decisions later in the year and bring forward an
Speaker 4: amendment builder to alter the Conservation Act. But really what's
Speaker 4: underpinning the concerns from environmental groups is this the nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty seven Conservation Act, which spells out the values for
Speaker 4: conservation and that is the protection of nature. It also
Speaker 4: says fostering recreation, and it says allowing tourism, allowing but
Speaker 4: not promoting tourism. There was a real separation between commercial
Speaker 4: and recreational and you know, the Department of Conservation wasn't
Speaker 4: really meant to be involved in tourism at all just
Speaker 4: only allowing it, and so far is it aligns with
Speaker 4: conservation values. Squeezing money out of out of public conservation
Speaker 4: land really pushes the department into maximizing return from tourists
Speaker 4: who come here and enjoy the conservation space. So the
Speaker 4: concern is that it's a massive shift in conservation value
Speaker 4: towards money making, and there hasn't really been any talk
Speaker 4: about what are the checks and balances in place, will
Speaker 4: decisions be made, what will they be informed by the
Speaker 4: latest science, or how much money can be made, what
Speaker 4: will that mean for our environment. That's not to say that,
Speaker 4: you know, it can't obviously improve the environment. The min'ster
Speaker 4: clearly thinks that's the case, simply because doc is so
Speaker 4: cash strapped, and you know, implementing all of these things
Speaker 4: will give Dock more money. But that's a big We
Speaker 4: don't really know, and a lot will depend on the
Speaker 4: public consultation process.
Speaker 1: Listen, Ruth, this is a no brainer. Everybody does it
Speaker 1: around the world. It's long overdue. Why on earth do
Speaker 1: you guys need to consult on it? Why don't you
Speaker 1: just do it? I mean, it's not unusual for the
Speaker 1: government to up charges. They just up charges the other
Speaker 1: day on the International visitor leaving. So why don't you
Speaker 1: just do it?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 5: Okay, good question this one. We actually need to change
Speaker 5: the law to make it clear that we can introduce you.
Speaker 1: Yes, so whatch you don't need to ask permission to
Speaker 1: change the law to change it.
Speaker 2: Well, the Minister wants Doctor be financially sustainable by twenty
Speaker 2: twenty six, but we've already spoken about that a best
Speaker 2: between the amount of money it has and what it needs,
Speaker 2: and that's only exacerbated by hefty bills, say from extreme
Speaker 2: weather events. How can they possibly think that that funding
Speaker 2: gap will be bridged in.
Speaker 3: Just a year.
Speaker 4: Well, it's probably not going to be bridged in a
Speaker 4: year because you know the car fees, for example, that
Speaker 4: trial is not going to start till the summer of
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five, twenty six. Any access fee to any
Speaker 4: place is going to require a legislative change, so it's
Speaker 4: going to take some time to build up those revenue sources.
Speaker 4: The documents. One of his cabinet papers also talks about
Speaker 4: if all of the proposals were implemented, it would still
Speaker 4: only bring in up to two hundred million dollars a
Speaker 4: year and a large chunk of that is just from
Speaker 4: the International visitory. If we think about the shortfall just
Speaker 4: in that biodiversity, if we think about that two point
Speaker 4: three billion dollars that DOC wants just to do its
Speaker 4: biodiversity work, and if we add two hundred million a
Speaker 4: year onto its annual budget, it's still one and a
Speaker 4: half billion dollars short. So financial sustainability there is still
Speaker 4: a giant question mark. But that's not to say that
Speaker 4: DOC wouldn't be super stoked with the extra two hundred
Speaker 4: million dollars a year. Of course they would be, and
Speaker 4: they would be able to do a lot more with that,
Speaker 4: but that'd still be really short of where it wants
Speaker 4: to be in terms of the money it needs to
Speaker 4: help the ninety four percent of reptile species, eighty two
Speaker 4: percent of bird species that are threatened with extinction, all
Speaker 4: of the visitor network assets that are depreciating and just
Speaker 4: being neglected. So this is another part of this strategy
Speaker 4: is that there's not enough money. So the Minister really
Speaker 4: wants to hone in on what is high conservation value,
Speaker 4: and then the visitor network that's the great walks, that's
Speaker 4: the popular hikes, the Instagram places or whatever, you want
Speaker 4: to call it, and we'll just leave the rest because
Speaker 4: not many people go there. And in the biodiversity space,
Speaker 4: we don't really know what that looks like yet because
Speaker 4: DOC has been building up this biodiversity planning tool where
Speaker 4: it can measure the conservation value of this project or
Speaker 4: this project or this project. But as I was talking
Speaker 4: to Forest and Bird Chief Executive Nicolatocki, and nature is
Speaker 4: really complex. You know, there might be a paddock that
Speaker 4: has a couple of dozen threatened plants in it, and
Speaker 4: if you build a fence around it and it costs
Speaker 4: fifteen hundred dollars a year, great, great return. But what
Speaker 4: about the half a million dollars they spent on killing
Speaker 4: a stoat on one of the remote islands off of
Speaker 4: the South Island where there were thirty carcopar Is that
Speaker 4: a good use of money? How do you weigh this?
Speaker 5: And that?
Speaker 4: It's like, I don't know, it's not just so like
Speaker 4: apples and oranges. It's like a ampewter monitor versus a
Speaker 4: navy vessel. It just seems like completely different spheres, of
Speaker 4: planetary spheres of trying to value totally totally wildly different things.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4: Derek.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enzadherld dot co dot enz The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 2: a sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
Speaker 2: Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 2: tune in to Morrow for another look behind the headlines.