Hague Kevin: Freedom Camping Bill — First Reading 
Hague Kevin: Freedom Camping Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:673;Page:19269] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 I am a freedom camper. I spend my holidays cycle touring this great country of ours or at least I used to spend my holidays doing that when I was able to take my holidays at times when I was not competing with peak motorised traffic on the roads. Most nights when I am bike touring I sleep in a bed especially as I have become older as it seems more comfortable. However when I go bike touring I always take a tent and I always end up camping out some nights—freedom camping. Oftentimes camping is the best or most attractive option or the only option. I guess I pride myself on leaving my campsite as I found it except for perhaps a little bit of flattened grass. To me that is a very valuable part of New Zealand tradition. 
Many New Zealanders and I think we will hear today many people in this House value it. It pains me to have seen in recent decades more and more places that I have personally camped in and that make really good campsites becoming off limits. Thus more and more people are channelled into commercial campgrounds and away from being self-reliant. 
I also say that it irritates me to see in the Freedom Camping Bill the term “freedom camping” which I think perfectly describes the New Zealand tradition that I have referred to as it is used to mean something quite different. Although the definition of that term in this bill will catch the genuine freedom camping I have described it is really targeted at one particular group of people: those who travel around in campervans that do not have toilet facilities and that are therefore cheaper. That is what the bill is actually about. 
Let me be clear. I know there is a genuine problem with that group of people. When I was a member of the West Coast Tai Poutini Conservation Board we received a number of delegations from councils coming to us to complain that almost too many tourists were being attracted to our region by the fantastic West Coast conservation estate. If any members of the House are not familiar with the features of that estate I certainly recommend it to them. Councils were saying that a proportion of those people would park their campervans in rest areas and at other points next to the road. There was both a problem of litter and a larger problem that many of those campervans did not have toilets. Council staff needed to take time and spend money on a very unpleasant cleaning up process. 
There is a genuine problem but which solution to that problem is most consistent with maintaining rights and freedoms and with continuing to encourage our vital tourism industry? Unsurprisingly the Tourism Industry Association is aware of this problem. It had been working on it for some years and had developed a solution. Its solution had an operating assumption that in general people come to this country because of our clean green reputation and they do not set out to undermine or despoil it. The people who rent these particular kinds of campervans—the cheaper ones—are in general some of the most enthusiastic about our environment. They rent these vans because they do not have much money and the fact they have chosen to spend their limited resources to come here speaks volumes about the high priority that they place on our environment. 
Although of course there are some ratbags who simply do not care for the most part the people who rent these campervans would look after our environment if they could so the smart approach is to make it easier for them to do precisely that. Put simply creating more places where campervans can spend the night that are sensibly spaced and that have toilet facilities and rubbish facilities is the smart way to go. The campervan companies would be charged with the responsibility of disseminating information about the responsibility to use these places and information about exactly where they are. That solution was being developed and had not yet been given the chance to work before this approach from the Government and indeed from Local Government New Zealand was imposed. 
Some critics will say that some local authorities have large attractive areas and a small ratepayer base and that is a fair point. I live in one such area and other members of this House do also. It is a common problem and I know it is a real one too. That problem is at the heart of the difficulty of providing good quality health services in many of our rural areas for example. It is the reason cited by the West Coast Regional Council for its being unable to adequately monitor compliance with resource consents as closely as it would like to. 
But let us also remember that these tourists are contributing to local economies by spending on everything except accommodation. They buy food fuel visitor experiences and so on from local businesses. Many businesses benefit directly from having them in the region and many others benefit indirectly. It seems reasonable to ask that the local economy contribute to some of the facilities needed by tourists particularly when those facilities alleviate other costs that would otherwise be borne locally as they would be in this case. 
In cases where a local community still cannot afford the cost of these facilities the view of the Green Party is that the Sanitary Works Subsidy Scheme needs to step up. The Government needs to ensure that the scheme is sufficiently resourced and flexible to be able to assist those local communities to provide campervan facilities. After all our whole New Zealand economy benefits from the tourism industry and it is reasonable that the whole economy therefore helps to provide the tourism infrastructure required. This is the right approach and should be allowed time to gain traction to deal with the problem. 
Instead the approach being adopted is punitive. It might work—it is possible that it will—but it seems a less likely method to work than the one I have outlined. The problem is that people want to do the right thing but cannot do it. More broadly it replaces the welcome mat that we extend to tourists with warnings of harsh penalties. This method runs a great risk of being counter-productive. 
In all of the debate which has been going on for some years now one of the facts I find most curious is that there is almost no hard information about the size of the problem. Perhaps the select committee might challenge officials and submitters to try to provide this information. I suspect that it is an extensive problem and undoubtedly a very unpleasant one but it is actually relatively small. There is some irony then that this bill is being advanced just now. 
I think we established in the House that one dairy cow produces about the same volume of excrement as 14 human beings. The Government is planning for a million extra dairy cows. Despite the Land and Water Forum having provided a historical consensus for both those who use water such as the dairy industry and conservationists to put in place a national policy statement on fresh water— 
Hon Rodney Hide 
: They hate farmers. 
KEVIN HAGUE 
: —including Federated Farmers I say to Mr Hide—the Minister has elected to not include the provision that would have required resource consent for dairy intensification. It seems a little ironic in this debate today. The extra pollution that will be caused by that one decision will dwarf the pollution that could be caused by hordes of campervan tourists. This bill sets out in the wrong direction casts the net too widely and uses the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a walnut. The Green Party will oppose it.