O'Connor Damien: Southland District Council (Stewart Island/Rakiura Visitor Levy) Empowering Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
O'Connor Damien: Southland District Council (Stewart Island/Rakiura Visitor Levy) Empowering Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 March 2012. Volume:678;Page:1173. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman) 
: 
 I too would like to stand up and congratulate Eric Roy the local member down there and to tell him that he is very very lucky that he has got the Southland District Council (Stewart Island/Rakiura Visitor Levy) Empowering Bill going through now because I am guessing that under the local government reforms proposed by National none of this would be allowed. I am not quite sure whether tourism infrastructure would be allowed to be a core part of local government services. So good on you Mr Roy. I think it is great that you have done that. 
I guess the question is whether without the reforms the member who has just spoken Jacqui Dean would be bringing a local bill to the House. I know that her patch the Mackenzie District—indeed one of the smallest in this country—is hosting well over a million visitors who pass through that area every year and is actually paying for toilets for the provision of water and for other services for those million-plus people. In fact I am not sure of the final figure; probably 1.5 million people travel through the Mackenzie Basin. The costs are as has been acknowledged a dilemma for many many small councils throughout the country. 
Can I firstly though acknowledge the victims of the terrible tragedy in Foveaux Strait with the  
Easy Rider 
. I understand that the boat had a chequered career. It spent some time in Westport which is indeed my home town. I think it was a tug or a boat used around the harbour. It had been altered—I am not sure whether “upgraded” is the word. It had been used around the coast of New Zealand for a number of activities. It is a very very sad and tragic situation that we have down in Southland. We hope that the families and the community can get through their pain and their suffering and our hearts go out to them. 
Can I come back to this bill though—and I will not take too long—just to say that it is a good bill because it does in fact levy the people who use the services of Stewart Island of the national park there and the wonderful facilities down there at Rakiura. But the same situation applies as my colleague Annette King said to New Zealand across the board. We have a number of councils—not just the Chatham Islands Council not just the Westland District Council not just the Mackenzie District Council or the Kaikoura District Council but a number of councils—that are burdened. In fact the previous Minister of Local Government said they were unreasonably spending money on providing promotion and services to tourists people who probably would be quite happy to pay for the right services and to support environmental safeguards. 
In Government I have always been an advocate of an environmental levy. It is not a tax as such and it should not be paid when people leave the country; it should be paid when they come in. They should know they are paying it as part of their airfare and that it goes towards environmental infrastructure: to toilets to signage and to good smart investment in infrastructure such as will happen on Stewart Island under the committee I am sure. But that wisdom and that management should be allowed to prevail right through New Zealand and there should be a fund generated from people coming into this country so that we can help and assist the councils to provide infrastructure that supports our “100% Pure New Zealand” brand. It is an aspirational brand. We are not perfect but for most people in the world we match up to it pretty well. But locals and people who travel around the country more often than the casual visitor might start to notice things that we are not doing quite right. 
We would like the councils to spend a bit more money. Depending on the outcome of the proposed local government reforms I guess they might or might not be allowed to do that. We hope they will because it is a core part of supporting the community supporting infrastructure and generating income from tourism and domestic visitors who come in and out of their districts. 
We support the bill. I support the bill. I think it is a good move. The alternatives unless we have a universal levy across the country on people coming in and out of our country are bed taxes airport taxes voluntary levies targeted rates and any other sort of imaginative idea that councillors and people up and down this country have to pay for the essential things that this levy will pay for on Stewart Island but also need to be paid for around the rest of this country. Congratulations Eric Roy. You have got it through just in time and I hope the people down there appreciate that. Kia ora.