charge for access to national parks?

ID isnt that difficult Im sure at least one person in every party is carrying a drivers license. However that is not the real problem. Most of everything above is not the problem Symptoms yes but only part of the picture. Even the fee avoiding backpackers are not the problem. The problem is Ponsi governance. This is a very short sighted way to manage the country but it has been the way it has been done since at least 84 and Rogernomics. First casualty of this was the kiwifruit industry Do you remember being told that kiwifruit sold in Japan at $5 each. Of course it stands to reason that if you can produce 20 times as much kiwifruit you will make 20 times as much. It came as quite a surprise to a lot of growers that this isnt the case. I think the current price on kiwifruit in Japan is about 20c The next casualty was or is milk. Here we are with the milk fat price at half what it was 5 years ago but still people spend a fortune on new dairy sheds and pie in the sky irrigation schemes so they can turn more unsuitable land into dairy farms. The casualty to come for exactly the same reason is tourism. We are on the crest of the wave. It only goes one way from here. If there is one thing that tourists hate its other tourists unyet here we are with a quarter of our population coming here as tourists every year. To put that in perspective think of a full typical 12 bunk hut. 3 of the beds occupied by tourists. The time is coming when a large portion of them are simply going to go somewhere else to avoid all the other tourists. We can carry on fleecing tourists like we do now in the knowledge they wont always be there or we can manage them. The obvious answer that solves a lot but not all of the problems is to restrict the number of tourist visas available. Maybe even make them cost more. Will this work? Even if it can could a government that cant see past the next election ever put it in place?

@waynowski: "why do you have to have ID? you buy a pass and use it without ID, open to abuse. but better than nothing, without getting too bureaucratic.." Well, you don't. But it's much less effective without it. Hut tickets, if they could actually be checked, don't have this issue because they're transferable anyway and can only be used once in a single place on a single date. As long as each person in that place is holding a stub with the correct date on it, it's clear they've all been paid for and the same ticket can't be used again. (Tickets have obvious other problems, though.) Hut passes already have an identification issue and there's a black market of people on-selling their passes. The only reason it's not emphasised is that it's probably an insignificant problem compared with the much bigger issue of even being able to challenge people for tickets and passes in the first place. The main cited benefit of a conservation pass is that it'd be much easier to check, because people needn't be using a hut to be challenged for it. There are ideas for variations, like local people not being required to pay for a pass, but one way or another it's impossible to validate the pass to a person without being able to ID that person, and it's impossible to validate that a person doesn't need a pass without being able to ID that person. If conservation passes were actually to be enforced to the level that proponents say would be possible, I think there's likely to be a much more obvious need for requiring people to have ID, because the practice of people on-selling and transferring around passes which aren't meant to be transferable will suddenly be the biggest way people get around not paying (as opposed to just being places where they're not checked). @geeves: "ID isnt that difficult Im sure at least one person in every party is carrying a drivers license." I don't think this is as clear cut. I have ID. I presume you and most people here have ID. It's fine for middle class office workers with internet, a reliable postal address, already having good documentation and with reliable people to verify who they are, and lots of experience filling out forms. It's less fine for others. Here's one example anecdote: "My daughter spent the morning helping a young man get some photo ID. You can't seem to get photo ID without photo ID to prove it is you. It is extraordinarily difficult for people without a passport, drivers' licence or other identifying certification. And the next step is to produce an official letter with your name and address printed on it." http://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/hard-news-crowded-houses/?p=360945#post360945 I guess my main issue around this is the potential to create yet another barrier for entry, as if there weren't already enough, to people who *should* have a perfectly good right to enter conservation land and who could benefit greatly, but happen to be underprivileged.

issue a long term pass with a persons photo in it, they are cheap and easy to make wih todays technology. can still be faked but, its one step to try and reduce fraud

A birth certificate gets you out of the requirement for photo id. Tell me thats not an easy place for fraud. A former workmate had the id of his dead infant son stolen that way. As for the official letter for the address. Ive just looked at my bank statement and power bill. Both have my address on so would qualify but both were emailed to me so how accurate might the address not be. My son missed out on a job because he couldnt get police vetted. The reason he couldnt get vetted was that he had just passed his full licence so had the paper temporary licence instead of the photo'd plastic licence that the police had full access to

Who goes into the wilderness - ever - without ID?? Call me prepared, but if I'm laying unconscious somewhere, I want to know that I can be readily identified. ID is not that difficult to obtain, and less difficult to carry. I like Wayno's suggestion of a photo pass. Easy to do, and it will minimalise if not cancel out pass rorting. The other thing I've personally thought of doing is buying two backcountry hut passes. One for me of course, and one for those instances when I choose to take someone into the hills with me. Of course, I don't expect every Kiwi to do this, but it's a small stop-gap measure I'm considering employing, especially since my pass is due for renewal.

backpacker coming to NZ with little money. although this guy was a kiwi based in aus. no mention of if he went to winz for money, they do have emergency funding in some circumstances.. http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/destinations/83443783/adventure-ends-for-a-tourist-under-queenstown-bridge

Sounds like there is an untold side to that story

He spent all his life working? Mostly in Oz, it would seem.... And he can't afford a flight? Hmmmm.....

Hi @Kreig: "Who goes into the wilderness - ever - without ID?? Call me prepared, but if I'm laying unconscious somewhere, I want to know that I can be readily identified." That'd be an ID you already have, though, right? Also, simply having a library card or a pack with your name written on it, that could be used to ID you to a potential rescuer, wouldn't be practical for DOC staff or anyone else to counter attempts to swap around passes and avoid paying. Tourists have passports. Many people have drivers' licences. I'm sure anyone visiting this website could visit a DOC website or open an app on their phone, create an account and use their credit card to pay for pass with a name to match their existing ID. Most likely within 2 minutes they could have it printed out on the printer at their home or workplace, or sent to their smartphone with a digitally signed barcode that can be verified and matched to their other ID by a ranger with their own smartphone in the middle of nowhere (no reception would be required). If these people needed to, they could plan to find a DOC office to get themselves photographed and a pass produced days or weeks before they leave on a road-trip where they know they'll need it. I'm sure most of these people will be fine. The nature of who they are and what they're doing means they're nearly always well equipped for planning well in advance, and having 90% of the necessary means, knowledge and documentation handy before they start. I'm more concerned about a significant section of NZ society who don't necessarily fit into the above categories, who won't have verifiable ID before they start, who mightn't actually be literate, and who won't necessarily be well equipped to track down a place that can photograph them and produce a pass.. or necessarily even know that they're meant to. Even if an implementation of a pass system decided that entry should be free for New Zealand residents, potential requirements for stuff like ID or more bureaucratic hoops could mean that the system, if done badly, might segregate users of the conservation estate even more than what it is already, or just create new barriers that make it much much harder for people who might some day have visited it to actually do it. Anyway, I haven't quite figured this all out. It's just a simmering concern I have. If it worked like hut tickets, nobody would care because they're not enforceable anyway, but the main argument for a conservation pass is that it's actually feasible to enforce because it's only ever necessary to catch someone on the land without the required paperwork. "The other thing I've personally thought of doing is buying two backcountry hut passes. One for me of course, and one for those instances when I choose to take someone into the hills with me." Just buy spare hut tickets. They're transferable. In the event you never use them they don't lose their value, unless the hut ticket system is done away with (which may happen some day). If you buy a second hut pass, it has to be in a specific person's name, and DOC doesn't allow anyone else to use it.

What percentage of Kiwis don't have or can't get ID? And are these the people who are rorting the system? My guess would be no....