Govt should invest more in our greatest earner

BILL English recently decided that no visitor levy would be charged to fund tourism needs, citing the $2.8 billion in GST already collected by tourist spending. Now we have this figure, the question must be why none of this has been spent on increasing Department of Conservation funding?

When National took power it immediately reduced the department’s funding, citing ‘‘belttightening’’ in the wake of the GFC, but it has kept it impoverished ever since.

Even it must know that it is for the wild places of New Zealand that these visiting masses have come to our shores; they are here to see kea, kiwi and kauri and great tracts of virgin forest, things they have never seen anywhere else. The Sky Tower? — they’ve got a higher one back home. So why doesn’t the Government invest in ‘‘the product’’ that is now the greatest earner for the country?

It is tempting to see the Government’s attitude to conservation land as a land bank awaiting some commercial use. Doc, with its mandate to intercede for nature, is in opposition to this; a weak department means weak arguments for conservation in the face of demands on the estate by commerce. And so we see the suppression of the department’s report on the Ruataniwha dam, the granting of the right to mine coal at Denniston against no opposition from Doc, the increased commercial operations in national parks, the backing off by Doc from taking the land it should for us in pastoral lease tenure review processes.

The real fight for the back country has had to be left to nongovernmental organisations such as Forest and Bird, FMC and Fish and Game.

But perhaps the worst consequence of this is the severe underfunding of pest eradication as a whole range of species moves towards extinction — those kea and kauri included.

It is time for a government that will stand up for the natural treasures and landscapes of this country and properly fund their future.