Freedom Camping (Infringement Offences and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

Members, when the House was last considering this bill we’d just completed call No. 8, so it’s call No. 9. I understand the member for Rongotai will seek the call—Paul Eagle.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and what a pleasure it is to talk on the Freedom Camping (Infringement Offences and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Look, the member who put this forward will know by now that we are opposing this bill—and for good reasons—and so we recapping on those just to bring you back into the fray after a short break. But really, I want to just step back and just look at the situation.

I know pre-COVID, certainly, there was a real dynamic around how we as a country manage freedom campers. They’d sort of got control of how they wanted to do things in their way, and no matter what part of New Zealand you were from, it talks about some of the more dominant areas in the South Island, for example, West Coast, Tasman, Christchurch, and, of course, Queenstown, Southland where those areas were just overrun. There was bad behaviour. It didn’t seem that local government had the tools and the know-how to sort things out. Vehicles from hire companies also weren’t equipped definitely with things like toilets and other sanitary conditions, and the good nature and conservation of New Zealand took care of that. Well, we all know what the locals said about that when they found suddenly their pristine coastlines and backyards were used as toilet blocks, etc. etc.

So the issue here is that whilst the direction is fully endorsed around this bill, the Government is intending to introduce its own legislation. And before you say “Hurry up, let’s get going.”, I was privileged enough to join the then Minister of Tourism, that was the Hon Kelvin Davis. He was part of a working group, a good one, too. It’s always hard to get local government and tourism authorities into a room. And then we had a very good conversation and I just happened to be with him for another project—he’s a busy Minister—so he said, “Come along.” and at that I learnt a few things. I learnt there that actually a lot of what’s being thought of, I think that on this side of the House we will do it a whole lot better. Plus, we’ll have the full round of consultation, which has been done. I know that the Minister’s intending to do further work with the COVID lens.

💬 Hon Member: “Nashy”.

Yes, that’s the member for Napier, the Hon Stuart Nash.

But I was looking at the advances that have been made just in recent times and even the freedomcamping.org app or the website that all of you can have a look at and just quickly punch in, that is significantly more advanced than when this was first talked about. And so I want to thank the then Minister, the Hon Kelvin Davis, for actually looking at that data and technology pilot that provided some of that real-time information. Too often, we ignore what people say. Tourists, both domestic and international, said they wanted to know what spaces were free to ensure that they could go somewhere and do it right. They wanted to do the right thing, and this was the best thing about it.

Tourism New Zealand came on board with education campaigns, and I notice just at the bottom of that website you can see the Tourism Industry Aotearoa and the Tourism Industry New Zealand Trust. So that partnered up like they said they would. They took the problem with both hands and said, “We believe with this technology we can actually do things better. There was also talk about that free access to the self-contained vehicle standard, saving users money—and so a lot of what’s being proposed here. I know that the member will be thinking that’s not enough, but I know with the work that’s been done already, actually stuff has been delivered and it’s not the sort of thing that’s got a lot of rah-rah because most of us wouldn’t be in that segment of society that is hiring campervans, touring the country. Some of you might be in there. If you are, therefore you’ll know.

The other thing that the group said is “We need to know a bit more. We were caught short.”, and I say that in terms of the tourism industry sector. They were caught short on saying, “Look, the market just went out there.” As I said, they put the vehicles in place but we needed the data to say, “How do we make it a better experience for everyone?” So the direction gets a tick but we oppose this bill. Kia ora.

Members, it’s come time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House will return and I will return to the Chair at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Ka te rā, tēnā rā tātou katoa. The House is resumed. Members, before the dinner break, we were debating the Freedom Camping (Infringement Offences and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Mr Eagle had just finished the call—and, I believe, Ginny Andersen.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s great to be able to speak on the Freedom Camping (Infringement Offences and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I have been asked to get as many puns as possible into this debate, but I will refrain, because we all know it’s wrong to take a dump on mother Nature, and we all agree on that. We are on the same page. So I will refrain from further juvenile references.

This bill amends the Freedom Camping Act 2011 to introduce stricter requirements around where freedom camping can take place. I always think of those signs I used to see as a kid where you’d travel around and they’d have a picture with “No dumping” written on it, and they would say it quite clearly, but I’m pretty sure they were referring to rubbish. But the same thing goes. You know, New Zealand has got a beautiful environment. It’s a gem. We should really respect Papatūānuku the way that she deserves to be.

I think the Minister responsible in this area has not minced his words one iota in the past when being asked publicly about his position regarding how our tourists who come to New Zealand treat the natural environment. So I think that while we’re pleased that the National Party endorses the general direction of where we’re heading on this issue, we still will, in fact, oppose this bill because we intend to introduce our own legislation and to do that in a way that improves the sustainability and cracks down on freedom camping in those areas, particularly where we know that they have been poorly behaved. There are certain hot spots across New Zealand where we know that there is loo paper and general rubbish associated with the known dumping turning up again and again and again.

So we know that it annoys the local people. We know that it degrades our natural environment, and, furthermore, it’s not necessarily the most productive way we can use New Zealand’s assets as a tourist destination. I think that, you know, one of the things we’ve seen through COVID is that while we have had to take a reset and had to shut our borders, this also provides a golden opportunity to try and do things better than what we’ve done before.

So what we’ve done already, the legislation that the Government will introduce will build on the Government’s earlier work to make freedom camping more sustainable. Some of that earlier work is establishing the Responsible Camping Working Group. I think there was an additional $25 million in 2008 to specifically identify more sustainable ways. As part of that, too, we’ve seen the introduction of a data technology pilot that has provided real-time information on the capacity of selected campsites to see where those strains in the existing system are and how we can mitigate risks in terms of camping grounds not having sufficient capacity to take tourists who are coming and hiring a campervan or a Jucy rental or one of those vans you see travelling around. Also providing free access to self-contained vehicles and saving users around $70 each to allow people to see what’s required for certification. We know that’s an important factor, if our vehicles are equipped to be self-contained.

But in addition to this, there’s also been commissioning of research, and that research is to better understand what we’re actually dealing with here. The profile, the value of visitors, both from domestic tourism and potential international tourists who go freedom camping throughout the summer. So we want to know exactly the profile we’re looking at in order to modify our system to best cope and to change, to dissuade those who are unable to treat the environment with the respect that it deserves.

This member does not have the appropriate bill and therefore we will not be supporting it further. It proposes measures that won’t address the real nub of the problem and it would give enforcement officers powers to inspect vehicles. We think more of a long-term approach that maximises tourist value in New Zealand is a far more beneficial way of addressing these issues. Therefore, I do not commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ve suffered my way through some of the presentations on this bill, being introduced several weeks ago, and it’s just come back for the end of its first and probably final reading, I gather. And I’ve heard nothing from the other side that actually made any sense at all or defended their position to oppose this bill. It’s innocuous; it’s such a simple solution. And even if the Minister did have plans to do something quite spectacular, which I very much doubt, because they’re not usually likely to produce anything spectacular, but it simply clarifies the situation for the Act that’s already in place.

Now, the Act originally—and it’s 10 years old now, so it was time it was modified. But over those 10 years there has been some glaring gaps in the rules around freedom camping. And the biggest one, of course, is proximity to a toilet. So this bill simply gives a distance from a toilet facility unless you are fully self-contained. So it clarifies that. And it also captures—and this is one of the glaring gaps in the original legislation—New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) land and Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) land. So for areas that have the ribbon of State highway that runs through them, councils were unable to police those areas for freedom camping because the legislation didn’t allow for it. It also allows for the infringement notices to be revoked and handed on to the hirer of a vehicle, so that tidied up people who would exit the country without paying any infringements. It also allowed for LINZ and NZTA to provide or appoint their own enforcement officers and, as the member who sat down just said, to inspect whether a vehicle is fully self-contained, because quite often people use the defence that they have a bucket with a lid on it, and that is their full self-containment. This bill would have made it clear that that no longer is a good argument.

But I’m always amazed when this Government stands up to kick a really good piece of legislation to touch, because they always fall back on the fact that they know best, that only they can do things better, and we’ve been hearing it all day: “We don’t want to have a look at any of the legislation that’s coming forward from an Opposition party”, because they’re going to do it themselves, they’re going to do it better, and they’re always going to do it soon. Soon they’re going to announce lockdown measures, they’re soon going to announce their firearms legislation, they’re soon going to tell us what the education system is going to look like when we start coming out of lockdown. Soon we’re going to know, but we’ve got to wait for the pulpit of truth.

But anyway, as I said, this bill is not going to see the light of day. And the shame of it is that it was so looked forward to by the 140,000 members of the NZMCA—the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association—and even by Federated Farmers, whose rural membership would have dearly loved to have had this issue tidied up, because it does need tidying up. And if anyone who lives in the country—and I’m sure some of my colleagues here understand exactly what I’m talking about: when you live in the country and you see what a mess is left behind from freedom campers, you know the situation is urgent. And wouldn’t it be nice that when we open up the borders—once National’s opening up plan is introduced, which it gradually is, by the way. Has anyone noticed that? I think we’re up to the fifth point of National’s plan being adopted by the Government by stealth. And won’t it be great to have everything in place, ready for our visitors to come back into this country?

Now, I remember the Minister saying he was consulting widely. This bill has been around for 10 years. We’ve been hearing the feedback for 10 years. I doubt in the roadshows that he’s conducted over the past six months or a year—whatever it’s been—that he has heard anything new. The situation is really clear, the feedback has been really blunt, and if anyone wasn’t aware of it before today, they’ve had their feet on the desk, they’re asleep at the wheel, and have no idea about what’s going on in the real world. I’m really sad that this bill won’t be seeing the light of day.