Debate on Crown Entities, Public Organisations, and State Enterprises — New Zealand Tourism Board

I rise to speak on this debate because tourism is one of our most important export sectors. In fact, over the last decade tourism was our single biggest export earner. Dairy has become more important over the last couple of years, but tourism has been our single biggest export industry. The New Zealand Tourism Board has done a good job in promoting New Zealand to the world, and the way it has done that is under our “100% Pure New Zealand” brand. But this has created an enormous conflict within New Zealand because of the contradictions around the “100% Pure New Zealand” brand. The “100% Pure New Zealand” brand is valued at many billions of dollars—possibly $18 billion, according to the 2005 Interbrand study. Not only is this brand how we sell tourism to the rest of the world, but also it underpins all of our other exports as well, particularly dairy: “Clean, green, and safe” is the foundation brand for dairy exports into China. So protecting this brand seems to me one of the fundamental jobs of the Tourism Board if we are to protect what has been our largest single export industry.

This brand has come under increasing pressure in the last 12 months. Just recently we saw the BBC in an interview with the Prime Minister raise a series of concerns about New Zealand’s environmental performance. That was based on the work of Dr Mike Joy, who is a leading freshwater ecologist in New Zealand. Those concerns undermine the “100% Pure New Zealand” brand on which our tourism industry is based. That is to do with the fact that the majority of our lowland rivers have become so polluted that at times they are unsafe for swimming, let alone drinking. In fact, according to Environment Waikato, 70 percent of the sampling sites within their catchment are unsafe for swimming; 75 percent are unsafe for stock water. We are finding that the “clean, green” brand, which is promoted overseas through images of wild, clean rivers—if members have seen those advertisements they will know that they often include wild rivers with people jetboating on them—is being undermined, as we destroy the natural environment in our country. One of the key drivers of the destruction of our natural environment over the last decade has been the intensification of dairy farming, which has resulted in increased pollution going into our rivers, and increased abstraction of water out of our rivers. It has also put pressure in terms of damming rivers so that they can be used for irrigation.

This Government is proposing hundreds of thousands more hectares of irrigated dairying in Canterbury alone, which will have massive downstream effects of pollution of our rivers and waterways. That pollution is fundamentally undermining our “100% Pure New Zealand” brand, which is our single most important tourism asset. Tourism has been our single most important export sector over the last decade. If we continue down this track of destroying our lowland rivers, which has been Government policy now for more than a decade from both of the major parties, we will fundamentally undermine our tourism industry.

The Prime Minister is the Minister of Tourism, and he looked extremely uncomfortable on BBC HARDtalk when he was asked about these issues. He was in denial and tried to say that one could find any old freshwater scientist, just like one could find any old lawyer, to say anything one wants. Actually, one cannot. The freshwater science community is absolutely of a consensus and of one mind that we are watching the destruction of our lowland rivers in front of our eyes, and that destruction is only accelerating under the pressures of intensive agriculture. We are fundamentally undermining one of our most important export sectors, which also impacts on all our other export sectors that rely on the clean, green, and safe brand that underpins the tourism sector.

We had an opportunity to do something about it with the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, but instead we turned it into a piece of meaningless drivel. We had a draft National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, which actually would have resulted in the beginning of the clean-up of our rivers, but it got watered down by the Government when the statement came back from the board of inquiry. That national policy statement could have been the beginning of protecting our “100% Pure New Zealand” brand by beginning to clean up our rivers. People overseas understand that we are not 100 percent pure, but they will not tolerate our being in denial about the fact that we are not 100 percent pure, and they will not tolerate our doing nothing to start the clean-up process. If we can say to people that we have a problem, if we can acknowledge the problem, and if we can offer a plan to clean it up, then people will understand our position. Instead, the Government has a programme to make it worse by accelerating irrigation and intensive agriculture by undermining the one single serious attempt we had, the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, that could have started up the clean-up.

Report noted.

Human Rights Commission

Report noted.

Hawke’s Bay District Health Board

Report noted.

Waikato District Health Board