DoC and Treasury arm wrestle over visitor levy funds and ‘high-value' investments
A Treasury report on International Visitor Levy investments for the Department of Conservation outlines for and seeks action from Finance Minister Nicola Willis on approval of the department's 2025/26 visitor levy investment envelope along with Treasury's treatment of a '$32 million shortfall from DoC's IVL allocation'.
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, Acting Political Editor Labour leader Chris Hipkins is dismissing what he calls "Treasury spin" after its analysts said the last government overspent during the Covid-19 pandemic against official advice. Treasury's 2025 Long Term Insights Briefing, released this week, calculated the total cost of the pandemic at about $66 billion, or roughly 20.4 percent of GDP. The report said Treasury advocated for more targeted support in late 2020 into 2021 and explicitly warned "against any further stimulus" by Budget 2022. But responding to questions from RNZ on Friday, Hipkins was unapologetic about his party's economic response to Covid-19. "We prioritised keeping people alive and keeping people in jobs," he said. "I'm never going to claim that we got everything perfect... but prioritising jobs and prioritising lives was the right thing to do." Hipkins claimed other countries also spent up large with the same objectives, but Treasury said New Zealand was near the top of the chart when considering spending as a percentage of GDP. "If you listen to the Treasury spin, then you're going to get one view," Hipkins told RNZ. "If you speak to other economists, you'll get a different view. "Our job was to support New Zealanders through the global pandemic, making sure that we saved lives and kept people's jobs, and we were very successful in doing that: one of the lowest death rates in the world, one of the lowest rates of unemployment in the world, and one of the fastest rates of economic growth in the world." About half of the total Covid-19 response cost was directly tied to the pandemic, such as the wage subsidy scheme, or health initiatives like vaccination, contact tracing and quarantine. The remainder went to a wide range of initiatives like: "tax changes, training schemes, housing construction, shovel-ready infrastructure projects, increases to welfare benefits, the Small Business Cashflow Scheme, Jobs for Nature, additional public housing places and school lunches". Treasury said that had "a lagged impact on the economy and proved difficult to unwind in later years". But Hipkins said Treasury had mischaracterised some of that spending, such as the provision of distance-learning for school students. "Making sure that kids could keep learning while they were at home during lockdown was an essential Covid-19 expense," Hipkins said. The report comes during a prolonged economic downturn, with both the government and opposition parties trading blame over its cause. Finance Minister Nicola Willis was quick on Thursday to wield Treasury's findings as evidence that Labour had been undisciplined in its spending, driving up inflation, and fuelling a cost-of-living crisis. "Treasury's language is spare and polite, but its conclusions are damning," she said. "New Zealanders are still paying the price of the previous government extending a big-spending approach initially intended for a pandemic response. "The lesson from Labour's mishandling of the Covid response is that while there are times when governments have to increase spending in response to major events the fiscal guardrails should be restored as soon as possible." To that, Hipkins scoffed: "By comparison to this government's track record, I'll take our one any day". Hipkins said Willis should stop blaming others and instead accept the consequences of her government's spending cuts. "The wreckage that she is leaving in her wake at the moment is obvious for all New Zealanders to see. Unemployment is going up," he said. "Economic growth has collapsed. Essential services that the public rely on a daily basis are falling into disarray, and this is all on Nicola Willis' watch."
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a day ago
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Department of Conservation to hike fees to visit sub-Antarctic islands
Wandering Albatross chicks on nests on Antipodes Island in the New Zealand sub-Antarctic Islands. Photo: Andris Apse The cost of visiting the sub-Antarctic islands will significantly increase, as the Department of Conservation proposes hiking its fees for the first time in a decade. About 1500 tourists visit the islands each year - most of them sailing with one of the six cruise operators who hold permits. Documents released under the Official Information Act revealed the Visitor Impact Management fee could more than double from $405 (excluding GST) per tourist to just over $1000 by the 2027/28 season. An independent review of the sub-Antarctic entry permit and concession fees recommended significantly increasing them to recover costs associated with tourism and to reflect market value. The concession activity fee would also jump from $30 per person to $171 - a more than five-fold increase. A long-time tourism operator said the increase and timeframe came as a shock. RNZ has approached DOC for comment. The documents showed the review into two of the five fees paid by concessionaires - expedition operators - was commissioned at the end of last year, with the final report delivered in June. "The review found the concession activity fee, last reviewed in 2015, was not at market value and that the entry permit VIM fee, last reviewed in 2014, was not appropriately recovering DOC costs for managing cruise ships visiting the islands," DOC said. "The review recommended DOC markedly increase both fees and DOC approved the recommended increases to fees on 30 June 2025." DOC said the concession fee contributed to general track and hut maintenance, and pest control, while the VIM went directly into costs related to managing the sub-Antarctic islands. The report said the average annual cost of managing the islands was about $6.4 million, of which $1.5 million could be recovered by the VIM. A DOC memo said the updated fees were a "significant increase for tourist operators, so it will be crucial to discuss the new fees further with them". "Concessionaires have already priced and are advertising trips through to the 2026/27 season." While operators had been advised of the review in September 2024 - and therefore could have made provisions - it said they may be surprised as "they can't reasonably have predicted the extent of change". Commercial director of long-time operator Heritage Expeditions Aaron Russ said he was concerned about the short-time frame and hoped to have a discussion with DOC before the fees kicked in. He said the sharpness of the increase was unexpected and he was disappointed that there hadn't been more consultation beforehand. "It was probably shock in the first instance, the degree of the increases as significant as the immediate nature of the increases. We organise and schedule our voyages 2-3 years in advance. "DOC's well aware of that scheduling timeframe, so the increases that have come about for the upcoming season are exceptionally short notice." Russ said the company was upfront with customers about the fees and collected them on DOC's behalf. He said he wanted to have a meeting with DOC to discuss the changes and better understand where the money was going, before informing clients. Russ said visitor levies should contribute to New Zealand's conservation, but were only one part of the picture. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
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3 days ago
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Stimulate Or Suffocate, In The Light Of Older Women's Spending?
In the wake of the recent release of labour force data (Household Labour Force Survey, HLFS, Nicola Willis bemoans 'glass half empty' view of unemployment figures, RNZ 6 August 2025), 1918-1920 National Party Leader Simon Bridges, has called for economic "stimulus" to rescue in particular the dire Auckland economy. (See Call for government to help Auckland as unemployment rises, RNZ; contrast the Minister of Finance Nicola Willis's retrospective and ongoing advocation of fiscal suffocation Dangers of Excessive Spending Highlighted, Scoop; both 7 August 2025.) My focus here is to look at the historical and recent employment rates of older women (aged over 55), and to consider the importance of their spending to the health or otherwise of the New Zealand economy. My reference is the first chart highlighted in Employment in New Zealand – especially of women – at the Age Margins, Evening Report, 7 August 2025. The chart shows that there is a huge increase in the percentage of older women who meet the official definition of employment. (This generous definition includes wage/salary workers – fulltime or part-time – self-employed workers, active employers, and people working without wages in a family business.) The data reveals a huge increase in the 'participation rate' of older women in the labour market. The age group 60-64 had a particular impetus to retire later, namely the rise in the early 1990s of the age of entitlement to New Zealand Superannuation from age 60 to age 65. But the pattern is essentially the same also for women in their late fifties and in their late sixties. The appropriate benchmark year is 1987, by time the HLFS was bedded in and before the economic consequences of the financial crash in late 1987. While the high period for employment of older women is 2022 or 2023, when jobs were plentiful, we can be sure that the actual participation rate has not fallen since 2022, and has probably continued to rise. (We can disregard participation rates published in the HLFS; they are based on definitions of unemployment which only realistically apply to men aged 30 to 60. There is much 'hidden unemployment' amongst older women.) For women aged 55-59, we see a rise in labour market activity from 43 percent to 80% in 2018 and 2023. For women aged 60-64, we see a rise in labour market activity from 18 percent to 70% in 2022. (The dip for this early-sixties age group in the late 1980s and early 1990s is unemployment masquerading as 'retirement'.) For women aged 65-69, we see a rise in labour market activity from 8 percent to 44% in 2022. For women aged over 70, we see a tenfold rise in labour market activity from 1995 to 2025. (We desperately need a '70-74' age category in the published data; this 'early-seventies' cohort is likely to now be New Zealand's fastest growing employment demographic.) Overall, this truly massive labour force participation of older women in the last thirty years has been a barely noticed social revolution. The increase of employed older women is even more dramatic than these figures look, because New Zealand's highest birth numbers were in the late 1950s and the early 1960s. These women are now in their sixties, and born with higher life-expectancies than their parents. It seems unlikely that this increased labour force participation is a result of the rise of feminism in the 1970s; an increased advocacy for paid work was one plank of that feminism. Though feminism may have played a significant but lesser role in this huge social change. It seems far more likely that the main driving force is economic pressure upon households; stresses that have increasingly required all adult household members to be attached to the labour force, rather than the pre-1980s' emphasis on an individual (typically male) 'breadwinner'. The stresses initially hit households hardest in the late 1980s through massive rises in mortgage interest rates, and in the more frequent revision of interest rates by banks during the lifespans of home loans. To that we can add an increased reliance on other forms of personal debt, such as credit cards. The ongoing stresses relate to both the increased precarity of paid work for men and women – meaning women increasingly having to make significant contributions to household budgets – and the failure of hourly wages to keep up with gross domestic product per capita. In order to be able to buy the goods and services which made up our GDP, we needed ever more hours of household labour. Older households were able to hold out for longer against these pressures, but not forever. Hence, most of the increases of labour force engagement for these households have taken place in the last thirty years. Older Women's Spending What all this means is that, in the 2020s, a critical component of consumer spending is done by older households, and in particular older women. Their spending is a major source of 'stimulus' in the 2020s' economy. It is already apparent that suburban cafes, for example, survive very much with the help of patronage from groups of older women. By and large, most policymakers worldwide have now forgotten the lessons of the Great Depression of the 1930s. One of the most important lessons was that countries which had inbuilt means to keep incomeless households spending suffered much less in the peak years – the early 1930s – of that Depression. (These countries included the United Kingdom and Sweden; they contrast with France and the United States, which were still in Depression in 1939.) France in particular could not get out of that Depression. In part because of World War One deaths and injuries, it relied very much on immigrant labour (mainly from North Africa). It also relied on female and male urban labour from people with rural connections. So, when the Depression hit, the redundant workers – having no access to benefit incomes – simply returned to either Africa or to their parents' small farms. Most of Aotearoa's older women cannot emigrate if they lose their incomes. But most of them will not be able to draw on a benefit to offset their lost wages. Some are already receiving New Zealand Superannuation, and that will rise a little as the marginal tax rates on their 'Super' will come down. What of those under 65 who lose their incomes, noting that many employed women age 55-64 live in households which pay mortgages or rent? Most will not qualify for an MSD benefit; they will be fully reliant on their partners' or adult children's wages. Some, who do qualify for benefits, will face stand-downs of several weeks or months; and time engaging with MSD that would be better spent with their grandchildren or elderly parents. One particular group of older women is those, mainly in their early sixties, who used to be able to get a 'non-qualifying spouse Superannuation benefit', ie if their partners were superannuitant pensioners with minimal other income. (With zero fanfare, one of the first things the Labour Government did, in October 2020, was to cancel these women's entitlement to what was an important form of transitional income support.) These women, grandmothers in large part, are the 'breadwinners' in their senior households. If they lose their jobs (or their 'roles' as we are now supposed to say), that means a potentially catastrophic loss of household income. (We should note as an example that the New Zealand Polytechnic sector, currently undergoing significant restructuring and financial downsizing, has a particularly important portfolio of older female employees; many of these workers have substantial institutional memory, keeping their organisations functioning more than many of the younger managers appreciate.) MSD should be focussed on helping young people to find paid work, and not having their resources logjammed by older women who would have previously had access to income support without red tape. The Laws of Stimulus The First Law of Holes, is 'stop digging'. (We note that a 'depression' is, literally, a hole.) Finance Minister Nicola Willis is digging furiously, burying alive suffocating Kiwis. The first law of stimulus is to stop public-sector retrenchment. That is the main single lesson from the near-forgotten Great Depression. The second law of stimulus is to have rights-based alternative sources of income that individuals of all ages can fall back on. The third law of stimulus is to stop pursuing a monetary policy that jacks-up interest rates; the 'cost-of-living crisis' is substantially a 'cost of jacked-up interest rates' crisis. (As I have already noted, debt is something that drives more people into the labour force; it's not just the amount of debt, it's also the cost of that debt.) We may note that New Zealand got out of the Great Depression by adopting all three laws of stimulus. And a fourth law, by using the cheap money to embark upon a very successful 'state housing' program, New Zealand recovered in 1936 to 1938 with double-digit economic growth and near-zero inflation. Some of those houses, well-built, are worth a fortune now. Fletchers and other capitalists made a fortune, too; this is the kind of stimulus which would meet Simon Bridges' business-perspective criteria. Homelessness was not acceptable to New Zealanders back then, as it seems to be now. Are we looking at a coming decade of escalating homelessness for older women? When just about every adult is 'in the labour force' – unhidden or hidden – desperately needing income while employment 'roles' are in decline, the social stresses cannot be contained forever. Younger people may revolt, turning to the underclass-politics of the street. Older people are more likely to die unseen, as too many did in July 2022 (many denied desperately-needed second-booster vaccines) when the Covid19 pandemic really hit Aotearoa New Zealand. Do any groups of influential people out there have the imagination and capacity to answer the call for humane economic revival? Or is it a case of those who would can't, and those who could don't? ------------- Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Keith Rankin Political Economist, Scoop Columnist Keith Rankin taught economics at Unitec in Mt Albert since 1999. An economic historian by training, his research has included an analysis of labour supply in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and has included estimates of New Zealand's GNP going back to the 1850s. Keith believes that many of the economic issues that beguile us cannot be understood by relying on the orthodox interpretations of our social science disciplines. Keith favours a critical approach that emphasises new perspectives rather than simply opposing those practices and policies that we don't like. Keith retired in 2020 and lives with his family in Glen Eden, Auckland.
