LAKES WEEKLY

Locally Ownedsince Forever Bulletin

On a wing and a prayer

How many years will it be before you are flying to Australia on an electricpowered aircraft? Ten years? Twenty? Fifty? For all the talk of regenerative tourism, Queenstown and New Zealand are facing a pretty insurmountable problem to go ‘green’. The jet engine, while a fantastic invention, is now a climate criminal.

According to MBIE’s Draft Tourism Environment Action Plan, published in June, 89% of tourism emissions were related to transport, weighing in at a spluttering 4,638 kilotonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions in 2019. ‘Air and space transport’ was responsible for 60%, it says. (No, I don’t know why it includes ‘space’ transport. Are tourists arriving from space? There’s no explanation in the report.) Despite long-haul (or Scope 3 emissions as the jargon goes) not being included in NZ’s net zero emissions tourism by 2050, the draft report does resolve to decarbonise tourism travel. Queenstown Lakes’ own destination management plan goes further and includes Scope 3 emissions in its more ambitious carbon zero 2030 goal.

Neither are really definitive about capping flights, or reducing tourists, however, as a way of achieving this. The DMP does plan to (deep breath) “understand optimal visitation levels and focus on value by increasing length of stay and/or yield per visitor” while MBIE will “assess the environmental impacts of the current mix of visitors and the impact of levers to shape demand and visitor behaviour”. I think that might suggest focusing on cashed-up tourists rather than bums on seats? It would help if it was written in plain English. Anyway, while these reports tentatively yawn and stretch an arm around the possibility of looking at the number of tourists, Queenstown Airport is pushing ahead with plans to increase passenger movements from 2.4m to 3.2m over the next decade, Auckland Airport plans a $3.9bn upgrade, and Christchurch Airport wants to build a massive new long-haul one in Tarras. So, with July 2023 confirmed as the hottest month on record globally, with Hawaii and Greece burning, and all the floods, Extinction Rebellion’s Pierre Marasti is calling for a direct passenger tax at Queenstown Airport, to discourage travel, with the money used to tackle the district’s infrastructure problems (read more on p3). It’s a good idea but I don’t think it will work. Central Government is notoriously protective over taxation revenue - they don’t want to give that power to councils, which is why the bed tax has floundered. Instead, I would suggest pushing for a beefed up International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy. It’s $35. Why not instead make it linked to kilometres travelled. Call it $100 per 1000km, which means you’d pay $200 extra to fly in from Sydney. It could be capped at $400. The money could be collected nationally and allocated for tourism infrastructure, and perhaps also to fund Queenstown’s laudable destination management plan.

Paul Taylor

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