Submission to the Walking Access Consultation Panel July 2006

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Executive Summary

Walking access to some of New Zealand's backcountry is, and has been for many years, problematic, especially those Crown and Conservation Lands which are landlocked by private land.

Walking access to areas of recreational and scenic importance is being eroded rapidly by changing land use, changing attitudes of landholders and changing types of landowners.

The problem is not confined to access to waterways and the Panel's terms of reference are not confined to waterways.

Words in the consultation document apparently narrowing the terms of reference are assumed to be an error.

The Panel's recommendations should cover access to all areas of recreational and scenic value.

Positive action to secure walking access to such areas is necessary and urgent.

To be effective, any solution must take account of the complexity and the multi-faceted nature of the problem.

The key to a solution is an independent Access Agency, representing a cross-section of interests, including outdoor recreation.

Funding for the Agency need not be lavish but it must be sufficient to enable the Agency to maintain impetus and not have to rely on the resources of other government departments or local authorities in order to be effective.

It is essential that the Agency is independent of the Department of Conservation, or any other department with a significant interest in land use and land management. The Agency could either stand alone as a Crown entity or could be a statutory commission drawing its administrative support from, for example, the Department of Internal Affairs.

FMC is in a position to feed information to the Agency about specific access problems, from its members' knowledge of access to the conservation estate nationwide.

FMC envisages that the Agency's primary focus would be operational - ie. documenting existing access, identifying problem areas and negotiating access in problem areas.
However, it could also be charged with considering and making recommendations to the Government on three policy questions relating to access problems:

1.
Whether any legislative response is appropriate to resolve extreme cases in which the fullest exercise of a landholder's rights denies public walking access to areas of recreational or scenic importance;

2.
Whether there are better policy options for trigger mechanisms to secure public walking access to areas of recreational or scenic value;

3.
Whether the rights, obligations and enforcement mechanisms in the Trespass Act 1980 need to be updated to take account of current land uses and to strike the right balance between the interests of landholders and recreational interests.