Review of safety set to go before Cabinet

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A report on the adventure tourism industry is expected to go to the Cabinet in the next month.

A review was ordered by Prime Minister John Key after he received a letter from Briton Chris Jordan, whose daughter, Emily, died after a Queenstown river-boarding accident in 2008. Key and Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson had read the report but its recommendations remained under wraps, a Government spokesman said.

Chris Jordan said from England last night that it had been a year since he had sent his letter to Key and the review was "moving too slow".

He said yesterday's sentencing of bridge-swing operator Alistair McWhannell for the manslaughter of Christchurch teenager Catherine Peters was too lenient, and the operator should have been jailed.

McWhannell was sentenced yesterday to 400 hours community work for the student's fatal fall from a bridge near Woodville last year. Jordan said the penalty did not send a strong message to the tourism industry.

This month, The Press revealed that Queenstown submissions on the review claimed some operators were running dangerous activities.

Many operators who made submissions were unhappy with a regulatory system that allowed some companies to allegedly operate carelessly.

One submission said many operators did not meet minimum standards and ran their businesses "by the seat of their pants". "Near-miss stories are the ones that do not reach the paper, and often the customers are not aware of how close they came to an accident either," it said.

- © Fairfax NZ News