Before we look into what Kelvin Davis and the 32 mayors of New Zealand had to say about it yesterday, let's look at what freedom camping actually means.
Simply put, it's the ability to park your camper anywhere that isn't a paying camp. Whether for the night, or for a couple of weeks, isn't relevant. What is, is that it is not a piece of land set aside for campers in which they can often be charged exorbitant fees. People want to park in bays and inlets and any area close to the beach or lake or river. That's what it is all about. They want the view and for many, who are on a budget, spending upwards of $120 a night for a family is money that can be better spent on sightseeing or whatever it is they want to do.
There are four separate big issues about this now and each of them is no better or worse, than any other the others.
1. Many councils have sold off holiday parks to make money to do other things. So, there is much less to choose from and the only option these days is the privately owned camps many of which do charge like wounded bulls. And I can speak on this, having owned a camp; I know what it costs to run one. There are also many, like us, who don't want to be sardine-canned into a camp; hearing your neighbour snore isn't part of the holiday itinerary.
2. Ratepayers are annoyed about having to pay for the clean up of what they perceive to be freedom campers. Now let's pull this one apart as it needs to be. In our travels, some of the biggest culprits of the poop-in--the park brigade are the day trippers. They are out there for a fish, for a swim, or for a day at the beach. But.... there are no toilets and often no rubbish bins. So what happens? They leave a large amount of evidence behind them, often in the mistaken belief that "it's only me, no-one is going to know". Wrong. We all do. Many campers, ourselves included, work on the basis that you leave nothing behind but your footprints and I have lost count of the times we, and people we know, pick up after this group. Secondly - ratepayers get it wrong when they think freedom campers don't spend money. They do. Diesel, food, alcohol, sightseeing, mementoes.. the list goes on. They help with the local economy and ratepayers do need to be forcibly reminded of this. There literally is no such thing as a free lunch.
3. and perhaps most importantly, councils are simply not putting in place the infrastructure that is required at popular spots. Toilets (even compostable ones), and rubbish bins are an absolute must at any area where people can physically park a vehicle. No excuses, Mr/Ms Mayor/CEO. This is one of the single biggest problems that is occurring and with the change to more centralised councils, the problem is that they only want to use the rates money within the town on new arts centres, sports dromes etc etc. This is not best practice when you are also touting your area - which you are ALL allocated money for in terms of tourism needs by the government - you have assets like beaches and lakes and rivers, then put in the necessary infrastructure and pay to have it regularly maintained.
4. Like it or not, we have a subsection of overseas campers who use the small slider vans or cars and of which there are two nationalities that, in our experience, are by far the worst culprits - they want to see our pristine environment, but simply aren't interested in being part of keeping it that way.
So - how do we sort this out? There are two further things that must be considered. Given New Zealand's current housing crisis, which shows no sign of abating and to be brutally frank, isn't likely to; the requirements to ease it simply are not being addressed correctly, more and more people are taking to the road in campers, house buses, slider vans and even just cars. They have to stay somewhere. New Zealand's aging population is such that in the Bay of Plenty alone for example, more than 18,000 of those over the age of 60 are living on the road. By choice, it must be said and a fair percentage of those do have home bases. But think about that figure in just one region. How many others are there exactly? The NZMCA is a very strong lobbying group and one with a very large membership. But if you are on the social media pages, you'll see there is an even larger group who choose not to be affiliated with them.
One thing I do know, these groups, affiliated or not, have to have their say - and they have to be able to prove that the points I've made above are salient ones that need to be taken into account.
My own observation is simple. Give kiwis a separate permit to be self contained travellers who can stay where they want to, even if only for the night in some areas.
Make sure the self containment certificates are not given willy-nilly to cars masquerading as campers. They do need to be in designated camping areas. All councils need to have set areas for freedom camping that have toilets, bins and paid showers - every single one needs to have at least one and areas that can take a combined total of 200 in large areas, especially in popular areas such as Queenstown, Bay of Plenty etc. Get those same councils to make sure they cater for the day trippers as well with toilets and rubbish bins. The latter two are the big bugbear. They don't need to be - the country needs them as a matter of course.
This is our country and we do have the right to freedom camp (even if, as some suggest, we need to change that name). It just needs to be a combined effort in putting in the infrastructure, educating non-campers/ratepayers about the direct and indirect positive impacts campers have on their local economy and to acknowledge where the actual problems lie so that the correct course of action can be taken to improve things. Banning it, however, is not one of them.
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