DEVIL IN THE DETAIL

WHY IS NEW ZEALAND SO GOOD AT PROMOTING THE THINGS AT WHICH WE ALSO EXCEL?

Is it time for Tasmania to adopt a bit of Kiwi cool and position itself as the New Zealand of Australia?

Alongside Australia, New Zealand almost always gets to be the cool kid on the trans-Tasman block (just compare Australia’s agonising path to marriage equality last year with NZ’s relatively fuss-free passing of same-sex marriage laws back in early 2015).

The Kiwis have a playful irreverence that does wonders for the country’s international image, as highlighted by Air New Zealand’s cheeky safety briefing videos, which easily outclass Qantas’s cringe-worthy attempts involving some phony ocker.

Then there is NZ’s renown for tourism, dairy, wine and wool, all of which Tasmania can match or better in terms of quality – but sadly without quite the same repute.

Clearly Tassie has the goods, so how do we capture a bit of that Kiwi mojo and let the rest of the world know about us?

SPRUIKING TOURISM

Tourism New Zealand CEO Stephen England-Hall says In the past two years, international tourism has overtaken dairy as New Zealand’s biggest source of foreign cash flow. “Australia is especially critical for us, being the largest international tourism market, accounting for almost half of all international visitors,” England-Hall says.

The New Zealand industry is well on track to achieving its goal of NZ$41 billion ($38 billion) in revenue by 2025 and, jobwise, tourism directly employs 8.4 per cent of the New Zealand workforce.

“Almost one in 10 New Zealanders are now directly employed in the tourism industry and this will increase as visitor numbers continue to grow,” England-Hall says.

“Tourism has the potential to improve the economies of communities around the country.”

University of Tasmania social scientist Associate Professor Heather Lovell returned recently from a walking and beach holiday in New Zealand. Originally from the UK, Lovell says the sheer number of tourists in New Zealand came as a surprise, particularly the summertime crowd on the beaches. She and her husband did the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, New Zealand’s most popular one-day trek.

“It was just staggering how many people there were doing that walk. There were queues in the final section for people to get off the mountain,” Lovell says.

“My husband, who is Tasmanian, was really concerned about Tasmania going that way because he fears it will ruin what’s special about it.”

However, Lovell believes it is important to maintain access to Tasmania’s spectacular wilderness areas. She says Tasmania can learn from the New Zealanders in terms of infrastructure to cope with growing numbers of tourists. Tongariro parking restrictions force trekkers to take a shuttle bus, minimising the size of the carpark and allowing authorities to control visitor numbers.

“Thinking ahead for Wineglass Bay and Cradle Mountain, how do we manage traffic in those places and avoid building huge carparks in national parks?” Lovell says.

“That tension is never going to go away, but if we invest in optimal resources at the really popular spots like Cradle Mountain and Freycinet, locals know there are still so many other places to go. Tourism is so important to Tasmania and it’s so beautiful, so it’s important to feel generous about sharing it.”

Tourism Industry Council of Tasmania’s Luke Martin says the last thing Tassie needs is to become a little New Zealand, which, he argues, has gone too far down the mass tourism path, but he says we Taswegians can learn from the Kiwis.

“I don’t think New Zealand is a comparison for us. Particularly on the South Island, their markets are totally on a different scale,” Martin says.

“We can learn, but certainly not seek to replicate what they are doing. The things we can learn from include how the New Zealanders have fostered nature tourism – not the scale, but the way they’ve embraced it. New Zealand has also very much embraced the notion of the visitor economy.”

Martin is referring here to the Kiwis’ innate friendliness and hospitality. It is hard to think of another country where locals generally give such a warm welcome, whether they are serving up fish and chips or running a service station.

As Tasmania’s tourism industry grows, Martin says, it is vital to “bring the community along for the journey” – persuading everyone that tourists are good for the state, encouraging tolerance on the roads and lifting service standards (a smile goes a long way) in both city and regional areas.

As Lovell suggests, Tasmania may also need to look to New Zealand for some ideas on how to spread the love into lesserknown regions. England-Hall says a major campaign is under way to attract more Australians to New Zealand’s Northland and the West Coast in the autumn, to lessen the summer peak. Another campaign is promoting a bigger range of walking options for Kiwis and international visitors, to “take pressure off the more popular walks”, he says.

Vica Bayley from the Wilderness Society argues Tasmania could easily position itself at a major advantage over New Zealand by growing the size of the state’s biggest tourist asset – no, not Mona, but the state’s national parks.

Why talk about increased tourism infrastructure in existing national parks, Bayley asks, when instead we could be protecting and promoting other areas of forest?

“We’ve got 356,000 hectares of the most spectacular forest adjacent to national parks and reserves and we have a really unique opportunity to grow and expand our reserve network and harness the tourism opportunities that would create,” Bayley says. “Unfortunately, in the current political climate, there’s not even the space to have that conversation.”

INDIGENOUS CULTURE

Away from the political minefield that is the forestry debate, Martin says that another important aspect of Kiwi culture he would like to see Tasmania emulate is the celebration of indigenous heritage.

“The way they share and embrace indigenous culture in a respectful way in the visitor experience is something we’re keen to see more of in Tasmania,” Martin says.

New Zealand scholar Malcolm Mulholland, from Maori university Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi, says in comparison with Australia, New Zealand has recently experienced “a seismic shift in terms of building a more positive relationship between Maori and other ethnicities”.

“This in turn has led to a greater acceptance of Maori culture within wider society and an enhanced appreciation of how indigenous culture can shape national identity,” Mulholland says.

He says increased awareness of, and respect for, Maori culture has been brought about by legislated compensation and land rights, as well as a strengthening of the Maori population and its political voice.

“As of the 2016 census, 2.8 per cent of the Australian population are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander,” he says.

“This is about half the level of the Maori population as a percentage of the New Zealand population.”

The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre’s Michael Mansell says New Zealand is decades ahead of Tasmania in terms of indigenous rights and awareness, thanks to enhanced land and legal rights and designated Maori seats in parliament.

“There’s a social, political and cultural view in New Zealand that Maori were the original people and should be accorded that status and the rights that flow from that,” Mansell says.

“But here in Australia there is no such thing as inherent rights and we have to go cap in hand to the Government for land rights, etc.”

Maori is taught in all New Zealand schools, city streets have dual names and Maori phrases such as the greeting “kia ora” have become part of New Zealand English. In Australia, a common argument against teaching Aboriginal language in schools is the large number of diverse indigenous languages that exist throughout the country. However, in Tasmania the Aboriginal community has developed palawa kani, which incorporates elements of the original languages remembered by Tasmanian Aborigines from the 19th to the 21st centuries and is being promoted as the state’s official Aboriginal language.

Dual palawa kani/English naming is a good start for places such as kanamaluka/Tamar River, kunanyi/Mt Wellington and larapuna/Bay of Fires, but what would it take for the delightful palawa kani greeting “ya pulingina” to become part of mainstream Tassie English?

Language expert Assistant Professor Nathan John Albury, now based at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, says Australian regions could benefit greatly from following New Zealand’s lead.

“We need to get to know our local languages,” Albury writes in the Conversation.

“We need to consider how we can better support the indigenous languages of our communities and work towards affording them greater local, social, cultural and economic status. A great starting point will be to take the lead of our Kiwi cousins and look at the issue of indigenous languages with more respect and enthusiasm.

PREMIUM PRODUCTS

When it comes to prime Tasmanian produce, including dairy, wine and wool, it is hard not to look enviously at New Zealand, which has successfully captured international markets with branding built around climate and environment.

Late last year, a Legislative Council committee investigating branding opportunities for the state’s dairy products highlighted some of the lost opportunities in Tasmania.

The final report bemoaned the selling of Tasmanian milk overseas and interstate on the commodity market as a generic Australian product, despite the state’s extraordinarily valuable “clean green” image and reputation for high-quality meat, seafood and fruit.

The committee found New Zealand has successfully capitalised on the obvious synergy between tourism and dairy with its “Pure New Zealand” brand and that, by comparison, “Brand Tasmania” was underused.

DairyTas executive officer Jonathan Price says recent investments made by processors in the state are aimed at “moving product into a high-returning product mix”. “We also see this occur at the farm level with a number of dairy farms now achieving or transitioning to organic certification,” Price says.

A similar shift is under way, albeit slowly, when it comes to Tasmanian wool. Once again, the New Zealanders have outrun us with the marketing of their wool, despite the extremely high quality of the Tasmanian product. About 95 per cent of Tasmanian wool is mixed in as a generic Australian product, rather than branded Tasmanian, says the general manager of agricultural services company Roberts Ltd, John Tuskin.

Tuskin says Tasmanian wool growers are yet to fully harness the opportunities arising from the state’s growing tourism profile. “Where Tasmania is going with tourism is so exciting and strong and the industry seems to be letting it find ‘the right way’,” Tuskin says. “I think that we need to be a little bit like that in agriculture.”

Tuskin says he can understand why many Tasmanian wool growers, particularly those who experienced the slump in wool prices in the 1990s, choose to opt into contracts to supply to brands like New Zealand’s Icebreaker or another non-Tasmaniaspecific brand. But with Tasmania’s growing reputation for highquality produce, coupled with increased demand for superfine merino, he would like to see more local growers banding together and demanding higher prices for their product, rather than being “price takers”.

Icebreaker was founded in New Zealand in the mid-1990s, pioneering the use of merino in lightweight thermal adventurewear, but has now grown so big its clothing is manufactured in China. The founders of Tasmania’s Smitten Merino clothing brand, Carl and Nicola Mason, believe there is much to learn from the Icebreaker story, and, like Tuskin and the members of the dairy inquiry committee, they say the key for Tasmania’s prosperity lies in building value around the Tasmanian brand.

“New Zealand trailblazed superfine merino next-to-your-skin apparel,” Carl Mason says. “Before then, everyone in Australia was wearing itchy jumpers. They started making sports apparel out of the kind of wool that was going into Italian suits. They got the jump on everybody.

“Brands like ours are following suit and we have taken it to the next level and specialised in women’s fashion. Most big brands are now made in China, so people who want to buy local, who are discerning about where their clothing comes from, come to us.

“We want to build the brand of Tasmania to be synonymous with world class and state of the art.”

GRAPE EXPECTATIONS

Sheralee Davies heads Wine Tasmania, the industry body representing the state’s wineries and vineyards. She, too, urges caution in following the New Zealand path, although she says there is much to learn from the Kiwis.

“They have done an excellent job of growing the reputation of New Zealand as a winegrowing country,” Davies says. “Even though some three-quarters of all its wine is sauvignon blanc from Marlborough, the focus has been on growing the whole country’s reputation. The promotion of its wine has been undertaken with strong, consistent branding and a focus on New Zealand as a tourism destination.

“Tasmanian wine does not have the whole of the country’s promotional wine and tourism focus behind it. In fact, our differences from other wine regions on the mainland mean that it can be rather difficult to secure support from our national (marketing) agencies. We are therefore appreciative of the support that we receive from the Tasmanian Government and Tourism Tasmania, which allows us to collectively promote Tasmania, its wines and other experiences.”

Visitation to Tasmanian cellar doors is growing strongly, up by 22 per cent over the past year to about 285,000 people. Tourism research shows these wine-loving tourists each spend significantly more than the average visitor to the state.

“In Tasmania, due to our scale, the focus needs to be on the value of visitors and not purely the number of visitors,” Davies says. While she says investment in wine growing is increasing across the state, the Tasmanian industry has the benefit of being able to learn from the New Zealand experience.

“New Zealand, particularly Marlborough sauvignon blanc, grew very quickly and found itself in oversupply. This resulted in value being eroded and prices being pushed lower, although New Zealand was able to recover from this oversupply and grow new markets for its wine,” Davies says.

“Both are lessons for Tasmania. Firstly, to do everything we possibly can to ensure that our growth is market-led and that we continue to grow demand for our wines well ahead of supply.

“Tasmania is an expensive place to grow grapes and make wine and our wine businesses would likely struggle to survive if the sector’s value was eroded in any way.

“Secondly, to continue building markets for our wine, handin-hand with promoting visitation to Tasmania.”