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Speaker 1: I you know what, I've at least partially changed my

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Speaker 1: mind on charging tourists. So the idea that you can

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Speaker 1: wander around our conservation a state for free is of

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Speaker 1: course nuns. And like the various charges that we've placed

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Speaker 1: on tourists, whether it be at the border or potentially

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Speaker 1: in a hotel with the bed tax, the simple truth

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Speaker 1: is if we got our act together in terms of

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Speaker 1: marketing and seek capacity into the country, people would actually

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Speaker 1: be happy to pay. Why because everyone pays for everything

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Speaker 1: all over the world. And if post COVID travelers taught

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Speaker 1: us anything it's that you can basically rob a tourist

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Speaker 1: blind they're still happy to pay. And that's before you

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Speaker 1: get to the bit where our dollar is so pathetic.

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Speaker 1: Most people coming here can't believe what they get in exchange.

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Speaker 1: But as part of the conservation announcement over the weekend,

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Speaker 1: if you followed that, what we also got was New

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Speaker 1: Zealand's great problem, the negative reaction. As much as we

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Speaker 1: love our open spaces and cleaner in national parks, you

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Speaker 1: have never seen a group of people more determined not

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Speaker 1: to have anyone else touch them. God forbid, we should

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Speaker 1: open the place up to a bit more business. We've

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Speaker 1: seen it for years in the rama, of course, and

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Speaker 1: groups like Forest and Bird, who must have spent millions

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Speaker 1: by now, and lawyers and the environment caught looking not

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Speaker 1: to change anything. Are the quiet skies type groups of

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Speaker 1: Wayhiki in various other locations around the country determine never

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Speaker 1: to see a chopper polluting their environs. Ever, again, there

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Speaker 1: is this default position whereby we're happy to be left alone.

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Speaker 1: We don't like intelopers, intruders or eck tourists, and we

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Speaker 1: certainly don't want them tramping over our stuff. Far less

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Speaker 1: ick landing a helicopter and then tramping over our stuff.

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Speaker 1: We don't like cruise ships either, so we've made them

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Speaker 1: ruinously expensive to park here so they don't anymore. Yay

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Speaker 1: When for the greenies, what we do like though, there's

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Speaker 1: lots more money, lots more hospital beds, much more education,

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Speaker 1: lots of welfare, lots of generous dollops of free stuff,

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Speaker 1: all paid for by the money tree in Wellington. The

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Speaker 1: fact tourism, the conservation estate, ships and rich Americans and

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Speaker 1: EC one thirties pay for a lot of that doesn't

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Speaker 1: seem to have registered for more from the mic asking Breakfast.

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Speaker 1: Listen live to Newstalks at B from six am weekdays,

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Speaker 1: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio