Barry Maggie: Southland District Council (Stewart Island/Rakiura Visitor Levy) Empowering Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Barry Maggie: Southland District Council (Stewart Island/Rakiura Visitor Levy) Empowering Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 March 2012. Volume:678;Page:1180. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I would like to speak in support of the Southland District Council (Stewart Island/Rakiura Visitor Levy) Empowering Bill. The miraculous thing about it really is that it has been such a long time coming. We have heard various members talk about the long journey for this particular bill. I would have thought it was a bit of a no-brainer really that the Stewart Island people should be helped in this way. Four hundred people cannot possible sustain the visitor numbers that come through there. 
Unlike my colleague Paul Goldsmith I have been to Stewart Island. For somebody who has been involved in tourism gardening and walking in the New Zealand bush—my “Cathedrals of Green”—Stewart Island certainly has an enormous amount of attractions. I felt as a visitor there that it would be appropriate to contribute in some way—and what better way than a visitor levy? For 40000 people visiting at the moment it would be $160000 so about $4 a head which is about the same price as a cup of coffee. It is not too much to ask and it would make a huge difference to the ability of those 400 people on Stewart Island to actually put in the sorts of amenities that they need if they want to please the visitors who go there in their droves already. 
The cruise ships have been referred to. It is all very well to have international visitors going to a place like Stewart Island and taking advantage of the short walk tracks that can be easily managed in an hour or two but for the people like me who like to go for a longer walk there is a walk that takes 12 days and takes you right around the island. I think it is one of the few places in New Zealand where you can still do it— 
Paul Goldsmith 
: Have you done it? 
MAGGIE BARRY 
: Not the whole thing but we can add that to the bucket list for sure. 
I think when it comes to unique properties Stewart Island has much to commend it. So too do the outlying islands. We heard Nikki Kaye talking earlier about the islands of the Hauraki Gulf and the member for Rongotai talking about the glories of the Chatham Islands. All of these places have things to commend them. 
To me Stewart Island has unique properties in the sense of its vegetation and its wildlife. It is pest-free apart from the odd marauding visitor no doubt. It is a place that has the ability to show New Zealand in the way it used to be to people who want to see it and who want to experience a kind of ecotourism that I feel will become more and more popular in years to come. So for the islanders by virtue of this levy tourism which is a very good source of income already will be able to generate more income for the people of Stewart Island and enable them to live there. 
As Eric Roy pointed out very carefully it is a very expensive place to get to. We saw through the tragedy in Foveaux Strait—an extremely wild stretch of water—that it is difficult and dangerous and that you need to make a conscious decision to go there. When you get there it is very expensive infrastructure-wise to set up businesses and to have cellphones and the other things that we who are living in more built-up areas all take for granted. 
To me the ability for people on Stewart Island to make a couple of hundred thousand dollars—and that would tend to grow as people realise and recognise that there is so much to offer on Stewart Island—would be something that would generate more and more interest the more people go there and come away from it extolling its virtues. So as a source of income potentially into the future the levy is perhaps the salvation of Stewart Island. 
As with many small islands it is very difficult to keep young people there. It is very difficult for an island to provide employment and to be able to look after itself through fishing quotas mineral exploration forestry or any other things—horticulture is not really a possibility because of the transport and the logistical issues—so to be able to generate income from tourism that does not really impact too hard on the tourist I think is a fantastic idea. Four dollars is not going to put anyone off visiting. It is really a very painless levy. In Palmerston North I think you have to pay more than that to get out of the place and it is worth every cent. I speak now without any major disloyalty— 
Hon David Carter 
: It’s always a pleasure to leave. 
MAGGIE BARRY 
: It is always a pleasure to leave indeed. Gary McCormick used to not think so. I spent a year in Palmerston North—in fact I lived in Feilding mostly because Tom Scott called it the “Athens of the South Pacific” and I felt that that was sufficiently intriguing. For Palmerston North itself the contentious nature of that departure tax has been well versed and I will not track through it now but it is nothing like the sort of levy we are talking about here. I think that 245 kilometres of walking tracks—all of which can be accessed from the town of Oban—make Stewart Island potentially a place that can develop very well in ecotourism. 
There is talk of the pristine beaches and the sheltered inlets and so forth so even for the more lazy visitor shall we say there is plenty to commend them. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Oh leave yourself out of it. 
MAGGIE BARRY 
: We talk of course about the blue cod the oysters and the salmon which are not going to be going anywhere across the House any old time soon because clearly some of them do not deserve it. It is very much a place where generosity of spirit and some largesse—a quality that appears to be missing from members on the other side of the House not to mention a sense of humour—are all to be found in the people who live on Stewart Island. Although they deal with their tragedies they do not have to put up with the sorts of horrors that the Opposition has to from within its own ranks but that is another story. 
I do not want to digress and take up the House’s time with that. But I would commend that Eric’s levy bill be supported. It has been a long time in coming—a very long journey. I am glad it has gone directly to its third reading. How good would it be if Eric is able to go to that funeral tomorrow to a community in pain and in grief at a funeral and be able to tell it this good news? I think it is entirely fitting that the House has managed to put this bill through at this time. I commend this bill to the House and I would hope indeed that we can get it through in a timely fashion with a minimum of fuss. 
Bill read a third time.