It is fair to charge foreigners more

deja vu.

It was only in August 2016 that the Green Party released a policy that would see every international visitor charged an extra $14 to $18 at the border, later raised to $20, whether or not they are walking our tracks.

The Greens expected the levy would raise $58 million a year towards making New Zealand predator-free.

The National Party policy is much less ambitious. It is expected to raise $4m a year, all of which will go to Department of Conservation (DOC) programmes. It came on the same day that Conservation Minister Maggie Barry announced an extra $5.4m a year for community conservation.

Rather than the sum raised, National’s policy should receive attention for its philosophical shift. This is a user-pays policy. Recognising that our great outdoors is a significant tourist draw, it makes foreign visitors pay their way while New Zealanders are still able to do the Great Walks at current, lower rates.

Despite their popularity, the Great Walks run at a $1m loss. It seems fair that international visitors pay extra.

The policy says that from October 2018, international visitors will pay double the fee on the five most popular Great Walks, which are Milford, Routeburn, Kepler, Abel Tasman and Tongariro, and 50 per cent more on the other Great Walks and back country hut passes.

The last fee increase, in May, applied equally to locals and foreigners. At the time, DOC said that about 60 per cent of Great Walks visitors are international and ‘‘the feedback we often get is how amazing they are and how cheap’’.

There is a sense that we have been almost giving ourselves away to tourists. The release compared the $54 charged a night for the Milford Track, with the Three Capes Track in Tasmania, Australia, which costs about $180 a night. DOC said the Great Walks network hosted 120,000 people over the previous year.

This week’s announcement also hinted at an unresolved tension in DOC. The line between tourism infrastructure and conservation is a fine one and budgets tend to be split almost evenly between recreation and natural heritage.

In this light, any policies that help to put a little more resources towards what many see as DOC’S core business at the expense of tourists must be seen as positive, even if the scale of the policy and the sums raised still seem cautious compared to the ‘‘taonga levy’’ floated by the Green Party.