Street Maryan: Freedom Camping Bill — First Reading 
Street Maryan: Freedom Camping Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:673;Page:19267] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I take great pleasure in rising to speak on the Freedom Camping Bill. As my colleague Ruth Dyson has said Labour will be supporting this bill to go to the Local Government and Environment Committee. 
This issue is a Nelson issue. It is a big issue in Nelson. The whole business of responsibility for the environment and the responsibility of visitors to the loveliest parts of our country is one of the presumptions of this legislation and I support that. Over the summer in Nelson this issue kept coming up. I will give a couple of particular examples from my own experience. I have the privilege of living just a block away from a park quite a large park in Nelson. Parked down the end of a dead-end street that crosses the street I live in have been a number of motor homes and campervans which began to attract a lot of public attention for two reasons. One was that up to about a dozen of them were parked there. I myself saw them there; it was not hard to see them on my way home. But those campervans were parked there in a place that was not a camping area. That is one issue. 
The second thing is that the fouling of that area really upset local residents including me. It is not good to go to bits of the road that abut parks where people have stopped and parked their motor homes or campervans and where if the vans are not self-contained they have then proceeded to use the public area as their own personal toilet. It is not responsible and it is not what we want either from tourists or from New Zealanders who are camping. It goes for everybody. This bill is about tourists who come to New Zealand to enjoy our picturesque areas. They must know that it is not acceptable for them to foul our beautiful environment any more than it is for any of us to do that. So I support this legislation. 
The issue ran hot in Nelson because there was a real concern about the bill preventing people from enjoying our environment. I hope the Minister of Conservation has this approach right in the legislation and we will find out shortly in the select committee. I think it is about right. The issue is not about preventing people from pulling up parking stopping over and enjoying our lovely environment; nobody wants to stop that. With the people being called freedom campers though there was a bit of a backlash in Nelson and it was said the bill would outlaw a way of life they enjoyed. But that is clearly not the purpose of the legislation and I would not support it if it were. However we on both sides of the House require people who want to enjoy Neale Park or anywhere else in Nelson to treat those areas with respect and those areas that give people access to lovely views water and recreation in our environment. We do not ask for any more or any less than that. 
I want to give another example that is also related to my own experience. Members of my family have a place in the Marlborough Sounds. That is not where I live; I live in Nelson but it is common for Nelson people to holiday in the Marlborough Sounds and to go there for recreation. I am one of those people and I thoroughly enjoy it. I will not tell people exactly where the place is because they might go there and enjoy it too much! It happens that in this little bay where my family has a house there is a legitimate camping site that the Marlborough District Council has said can be a camping site for 2 nights only. But the locals have had to put up signs saying “Please don’t treat this like your personal toilet.” because the abuse that has occurred in that lovely part of the Marlborough Sounds has been obscene. It has been offensive in anybody’s language. If those offenders can be fined then that is good. Let us slap an instant fine on them but more than that let us demonstrate to the people who come to our country as tourists that we are equipping the local authorities to do something about this issue. 
Where my family is in the Marlborough Sounds as I said the Marlborough District Council has allocated space for freedom campers. That is great; it is a beautiful spot. It is nice and I do not begrudge anybody spending a couple of nights there. But if their vehicles are not self-contained and are not geared for the disposing of their own waste then I am sorry but they cannot use our backyard for that purpose. It does not matter whether it concerns a park in Nelson or a dear little bay in the Marlborough Sounds where I am still trying to catch snapper the protection of the environment that this bill provides is worth supporting. 
I have a bit of a problem which I hope we can sort out in the select committee with the mechanisms around the instant fine. I think it will be quite hard to recover that from campers sometimes but if it can be done through credit card bills then that is fine. I remember a very long time ago getting a fine through Hertz because I travelled in a bus lane without knowing it while driving a rental car in Rome. 
Jacqui Dean 
: How did you know the difference? 
Hon MARYAN STREET 
: Well everybody was going at a zillion miles an hour so it was really hard to know. I was just trying to stay alive. I did not know it was a bus lane and I got a ticket later on through Hertz for travelling in that lane. But I copped that and saw clearly that it is possible a fine can be extracted later on. Billing someone’s credit card is a very easy way of doing that so let us explore the practicalities of it. 
In essence this is a constructive bill. I like the fact that it underscores people’s responsibility. We have a responsibility as citizens and keepers of this land to protect it but the people who come to visit it also have a responsibility to treat our land and this place with respect as well. I spent a large part of my youth tramping up and down Mount Taranaki. I was born and brought up in New Plymouth and there we go to the beach and to the mountain. We learnt that if we took something in we took it out; we did not leave it behind. We should not foul the environment with waste of any sort and the particularly offensive examples we have had recently in the Nelson area have made me absolutely committed to making sure that this provision goes through and works so that local councils and the Department of Conservation have the ability to strike fines and to punish people where they are caught. It goes to our reputation as a country and as a tourist destination and to our own responsibility to look after and be the kaitiaki the guardians of our environment. To that end I support this bill and so will most of the people in Nelson. Thank you.