Press release
The NZ Outdoors and Freedom Party is appalled that DoC wants to charge New Zealanders parking and any other access fees to visit National Parks and other conservation land.
“I am disgusted they would even contemplate it,” said Alan Simmons, president of the NZ Outdoors and Freedom Party. “This is public land and it’s ridiculous such an idea would be considered by public service bureaucrats.”
Alan Simmons was also critical of the Minister of Conservation Tama Potaka for going along with the idea.
“If he had empathy with the outdoors and the Kiwi outdoor lifestyle, he would have squashed the idea before it ever got to this stage,” said Simmons.
Conservation minister Tama Potaka.
The Department of Conservation has released two documents for public consultation on “modernising” conservation, seeking feedback on questions like who should pay visitor fees, where, and what that money should go towards.
The priorities included fixing concession prices, generating new revenue, targeting investment into “high-value conservation outcomes and strengthening relationships with iwi.
Public Access Important
Alan Simmons is unimpressed to the point of anger. One of the key objectives of conservation is to facilitate access to the outdoors and nature, not block our access with parking fees or other restrictions.
“They are proposing to spend $3.5 million on a very expensive trial of parking fees, using funds controversially collected from international visitors for improving NZ infrastructure.” said Alan Simmons. “The very idea that visitors levies are being allocated to fund more red tape so DOC can charge us all access fees, defies belief, and makes a complete mockery of ACT’s promises to reduce bureaucracy and red tape.”
“Our other concern is the slippery slope to privatisation of our great New Zealand Outdoors if the right to free access is eroded.”
“The NZ Outdoors & Freedom Party is concerned that the sum allocated for this expensive trial for conservation parking is completely disproportionate to any possible benefit, and that it indicates an agenda to privatise our outdoors resources.”
Urewera Park
The John Key National government gave the Urewera National Park to a Maori tribe without asking the owners – the New Zealand public,” he said.
Since then public access to the Ureweras has been severely restricted and many tramping huts have been destroyed.
Alan Simmons said it must be remembered that the “He Puapua” agenda crafted by Labour included handing New Zealand’s conservation estate to Maori.
“That idea is dead, but certainly not buried,” he said. “If that happens, you can be quite sure we’ll all be charged an access fee.”
Leader of the NZ Outdoors and Freedom Party Sue Grey said “It’s not acceptable for DoC to assert control over public resources in ways that undermine public access or that disconnect New Zealanders from the outdoors and nature. We cannot understand how they could possible justify using visitor infrastructure levies to fund trials on charging for public access.”
Full Transparency
The Outdoors and Freedom Party is determined to put a stake in the ground and require full transparency of the full agenda so all people can engage in a public discussion about the future of our conservation law.
“Access to the outdoors is our heritage, and protecting access to all our treasured species is important. Many New Zealanders are concerned about conservation dogma that promotes ideology and poison over balance and respect for nature,” she said.
Alan Simmons -Unfettered outdoor access is our heritage
The NZ Outdoors and Freedom Party have asked under the OIA for all the analysis and assumptions relied on by DoC, and is waiting to receive and analyse this information.
“We call on all Kiwis who love and enjoy the outdoors to join with us to challenge the Department of Conservation.” said Alan Simmons whose life has been in the outdoors and is author of trout fishing and hunting books, as well as co-authoring “Freedom Village” with Sue Grey.
“Whether your interests are tramping, photography, fishing, hunting or any other outdoors activity you need to be very concerned about what DoC is proposing.”
Searching Scrutiny
“There are always alternative solutions” said Sue Grey. “If the Department of Conservation and its Minister are seeking more revenue to fund the bureaucracy, a searching scrutiny should be made of the department’s workings.”
“DoC’s 1080 programme flies in the face of scientific studies. 1080 poison operations typically cost millions of dollars and achieve nothing except poisoning the ecosystem with a loss of insect, bird and animal life.”
The endangered and declining status of the kea is a prime example. Once kea were regarded as in plague proportions, with a bounty on their head.
“Now since DoC was formed and embarked on its topdressing of the public’s lands with deadly 1080 poison, kea numbers have plummeted. Keas were for decades abundant and co-existing with stoats and rats for a couple of centuries. Why has the kea population crashed in the last twenty years?”
“Minister Potaka needs to pay more attention to the department he’s meant to be in charge of. Lets forget charging the public to enter our own property and lets look instead at the mismanagement of the ecosystem and wildlife destruction DoC is guilty of,” said Alan Simmons.
Contact:- Alan Simmons
027 498 0304
Hands off public lands.
The public own them, not DOC.
DOC is well funded by the public via taxes.
The public should not have to pay for access to their property.
Politicians and bureaucrats always want more of the public’s money to spend because that gives them greater control our lives. We pay taxes to employ politicians and bureaucrats.
Undeniably and given the cist of living pressures on NZ families, the proposal to charge Kiwis will mean they will be “priced out” of their own backyard.
It’s pretty heartless by Minister Tama Potaka and DOC’s head oiffice bureaucrats.
It will effectively creates a two-class system, those who can afford it and those who can’t.
It’s not new coming from DOC bureaucrats. In 2017 Department of Conservation (DoC) director general Lou Sanson publicly said New Zealand could follow South American countries in charging for access to national parks.
Sanson came up with some screw-ball ideas at times such as when he accused hunters of liberating sika deer in north Taranaki (they had been there for years and probably Sanson wouldn’t recognise a deer if he tripped over it). He fired up imagined threats from the public over DoC’s mass poisoning policies. The result is some DoC offices are closed to the public during working hours. So much for public servants, operative words.
What the Minister of Conservation Tama Potaka and DoC need to realise is that New Zealand was founded by people who had deliberately abandoned a feudal society built on privilege and a pecking order to one based on social equality and opportunity for all.
That kind of society is shown by a resistance to commercialising the outdoors and is written into the laws around fish and game and charging for rights/access to those recreations. There are modest licence fees for trout fishing and hunting.
The society in the UK the early settlers escaped from was and is one that is NOT founded on equality but on privileges bestowed on the wealthy upper class by accident of birth or by possession of wealth.
It’s in NZ’s egalitarian society’s ethos that as of right the public have ownership of fish and game, of national parks and publicly owned preserves such as forest parks and conservation land.
I’ve witnessed DOC “at work” and as a taxpayer have seen some big wastage and mispent public funds.
No way will this happen! For a start most New Zealanders will not pay it, and how in any case would it be administered? It’s right we charge visitors a $100 fee when they enter New Zealand ( Not Aotearoa) and that is easy to administer and that money should be used for track maintenance etc The real issue is the huge waste of Doc’s resources and taxpayers money – they are quite inefficient and need to plug that hole first.
Alex has got it right but make it $200 or more that way if it puts some off there’s less pressure on public land.
Alex has got it right but make it$200 or more for all those except those holding NZ passports. If that’s too much and it puts a few off then there’s less pressure on DoC facilities less maintenance costs.
In 1986, the deal with the Government was that the new GST tax would be charged to pay for wider Government services such as Conservation. And hence DoC was formed (for better or worse), paid for by the new tax. Since then GST has increased from 10% to 15% and now the Government wants to add another tax to access our own land, to feed their insatiable bureaucracy.
No chance of me ever paying it. I’d rather go to prison.
No access fee is required to provide extra DoC services. Just get DOC stop 1080 poisoning. That would provide plenty of money for them.
It’s quite ridiculous for Kiwis to have to pay for access to their own land. Lou Sanson is a smug git who has got away with hoodwinking the main stream media into publishing even his most wacky ideas. DOC have millions to waste on poisoning programmes to rid the country of any introduced species because DOC decide they don’t like them. Many of these species provide food on the tables of people in rural areas especially when weather events and earthquakes block road and rail routes. DOC don’t need more money they need to be brought back to earth. A big clean out to introduce sanity to the organisation is long overdue. When you lead an organisation that locks out the very people it is meant to represent it’s time to look in the mirror to see where the fault lies.
If this sort of privatising plague gets a stronger hold how long before some numbskull politicians and bureaucrats rediscover the lunatic idea of claiming ownership of the rain and trying to charge us per millimetre of rainfall in our own districts?
Ridiculous? Yes of course it is – but no more so than many of their other ideas.