SPANIARD: There’s political gold in the backcountry

Desirable political real estate has been ownerless since the Green Party long ago sidelined ‘people’s parks’ and science-based conservation policies in favour of Treatyism. Any major party grabbing this policy real estate, including astute management of its resources, will find it comes with a rich seam of votes.

Conservation and the boons flowing from it are historically conservatives’ terrain, for example, from Edmund Burke and Theodore Roosevelt to New Zealand’s Denis Marshall and Simon Upton. While non-conservative political parties have made contemporary mileage from conservation, in New Zealand those parties’ focus on prioritising Māori groups and tribal practices at the cost of democracy and science now means it could be ‘owned’ by the centre-right just as easily.

Sixty-four per cent of voters opposed potential sale of up to 60% of public conservation land in a June Curia poll spurred by the Conservation Amendment Bill. For the ACT Party, the figure is 63%. The bill’s land disposals aspect has since been scuttled.

New Zealanders’ great love for their collective turangawaewae may have surprised some party policymakers. It shouldn’t have. Kiwis have mingled in the backcountry, on nature’s terms, since our nation’s earliest days, hunting and prospecting, climbing and guiding, seeking solitude and solace and friendship and challenge, history- and nature-watching, driven by as many purposes as there are people.

The numbers are big. A third of Kiwis get out there (fewer pursue organised sports); the Curia poll shows many more appreciate our wild places and simply want to know they’re looked after.

With science-driven management, there’s bang-for-buck that goes beyond conservation land boundaries. Water capture and regulation and biodiversity spillovers boost surrounding areas’ health. There’s potential for trustworthy and trusted use of the land’s tourism and other resources.

The present conservation legislation’s bones are good, but no longer good enough; Kiwis can no longer have certainty it will provide what its black letter says. From governance to operations, Māori groups’ demands hobble it, and there’s wide disgruntlement with its permissions provisions.

Around one third of New Zealand is public conservation land.

Yet it seems no major political party understands the formative and sustaining role it plays in our nation. Not one articulates, unambiguously, both the intangible treasure that is New Zealand’s backcountry and how its tangible treasure can be drawn on, credibly and with precision.

For now, parties’ conservation policies are a mix of incomplete statements, Treaty-related contradiction, and near-silence.

Streets ahead on Kiwis’ unique backcountry culture, the ACT Party’s ‘plan for hunting and conservation’ delivers well, saying, “ACT’s plan backs the people already in the hills, the hunters, volunteers, and clubs who look after the land we all own, to manage it for conservation, recreation, and the regions, instead of locking them out.” Crucially, however, it declares no stance on conservation assets’ overall management including concessions, and whether the Treaty will continue its undue influence in the public conservation sphere.

Treaty distraction has led the Green Party to a perverse position. Its conservation policy says public conservation land “belongs to all of us”, while proposing to “uphold the tino rangatiratanga of iwi and hapū”, as if these things were not incompatible. Similarly, it proposes using science while placing “indigenous-led land stewardship at the centre”. Kiwis’ shared heritage in the outdoors is shown scant regard by the party.

Led largely by bureaucrats, the Opportunity Party does a slicker job of concealing its impossible wish to marry the democratic and the neolithic in the public conservation sphere, but in the end, those systems’ unmarriageability makes the party’s conservation policy incoherent. “Devolution” to “rangatiratanga” will not deliver the strong management democracy and science can, nor guarantee Kiwis’ ongoing open access to the hills, nor ensure commercial exploitation is done fairly or carefully.

New Zealand First, for the party claiming to be most attuned to Kiwis’ sense of nationhood, is oddly seemingly blind to the extent New Zealand’s sense of self has been, and is, forged in the backcountry. Its approach to conservation policy is barely a sketch, either advocating commercial exploitation or remaining silent (it had no conservation policy at the time of writing). This most apt inheritor of policy leadership for the Great Outdoors, should it claim that leadership, would profit tidily from it.

Majorities of Labour Party and National Party voters opposed sale of public conservation lands in the Curia poll. At the time of writing, neither party had election campaign policies on conservation. Both, though, have strong recent histories of approaching conservation, recreation, and concessions as Treaty issues. National at least has up-to-date policy supporting a relevant niche, hunting and fishing, but that is all.

The last political party with any chance of winning Parliamentary seats, Te Pāti Māori, has no election policy on conservation. It has asserted in the past, however, that all public conservation land should be given to iwi and hapū.

Parties and politicians, there’s gold in the hills. The backcountry is a foundation stone in our national sense of self, it’s letting nature simply ‘be’, it’s all-round good health, and it’s prosperity. Give it your attention, and give New Zealanders ‘people’s parks’ policy wisdom they can take to the polls.

Spaniard has a background in conservation, farming, and recreation.