Machinion Post

Asked on Morning Report what new taxes a re-elected National government might introduce, the Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, pointed to what he called existing policy, among it a rise in the fuel excise tax, and raised the prospect of an accommodation levy. Neither idea has yet been set out in any detail. The rate, the base, who collects it and where the money would go are all, on the public record, unknown.

What is at stake is not small. This country's popular places, its lake edges, its alpine tracks, its short stretches of coast that carry the whole weight of a season's visitors, are already strained past what the conservation estate and local roads were built to bear. Money is needed to manage that strain properly, and an International Visitor Levy already exists for exactly that purpose. A further accommodation levy, if it fell on visitors rather than residents, could in principle add to that fund without asking New Zealanders to pay for wear their own use of these places does not cause. That is a case worth making, and this newspaper has made a version of it before: better a fair price on the privilege of a crowded place than another car park.

But a case worth making is not the same as a case made. An accommodation levy that falls on the same beds used by domestic families on their own school-holiday trip is not a tourist tax at all; it is a tax on New Zealanders' own leisure, and the Minister of Tourism and Hospitality, Louise Upston, cannot allow that distinction to be blurred by silence. A rise in the fuel excise tax, meanwhile, lands hardest on exactly the regional, self-drive visitor that domestic tourism and small hospitality businesses most depend on, at a time when many of those businesses are already thin on margin. Raised as an aside on a breakfast programme, with no design attached, the idea invites exactly the confusion it has already caused: is this a visitor charge, a general tax rise, or both. The Minister's portfolio exists to answer that question before the country is asked to vote on it, not after.

A levy that separates the visitor from the resident, and directs its proceeds visibly to the places under pressure, deserves serious consideration. A tax rise floated without that separation deserves none, and should not be allowed to travel on the goodwill the first idea has earned.