Editorial: Adventure tourism checks are overdue

OPINION: In an increasingly regulated and risk-adverse world, it is astonishing that some branches of the adventure tourism industry have been allowed to develop largely unchecked.

It is also, as Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson puts it, "scary" that companies can start up with no such checks or controls – or that some current tourism operations would likely be shut down under mandatory safety checks and a compulsory register.

The first question is: which ones? Are people facing unreasonable risks during the next few months while the regulations are being written, debated and eventually brought into law? Can nothing be done in the interim to bring to heel the industry cowboys – who presumably make up a tiny minority of the 1500 or so operators in the sector?

An obvious obstacle is the need to develop regulations that reinforce safety standards without being overly restrictive. Adventure tourism draws thousands of adrenalin-junkies to New Zealand each year. The need to develop appropriate rules, checks and balances goes without saying. However, the lawmakers need to take care not to strangle this golden goose (worth around $3 billion a year) in unnecessary red-tape.

It is thought that 850,000 foreign visitors take part in some form of adventure tourism in New Zealand every year. Domestic clients are important to the industry, too. All of them have the right to expect that commercial operations will be run responsibly, with public safety being the greatest imperative by far.

Hovering on the edge of a bungy tower, bridge-swing or other such activity, a nervous first-timer must overcome natural fears before taking their leap of faith. They do so in the reasonable expectation that the operators in whom they place their lives are experienced, competent and zealous in ensuring the "adventure" is risk-free, the equipment is subjected to regular and scrupulous checks and that all possible factors are taken into account in the planning for each excursion.

Given the numbers who participate each year in adventure tourism, it could be argued that the safety record is already satisfactory, and that standard Labour Department rules, along with those already governing some of the riskier activities, should suffice. Thirty-nine fatalities between 2004 and last year might not seem excessive when compared with the toll from driving, for example.

However, the pertinent point is that at least some of these accidents only happened because of a gung-ho attitude from the operators concerned. The consequences of fatal carelessness must permanently scar the friends and families of victims.

It is unfortunate that it has taken two high-profile deaths – one from a Manawatu bridge swing, the other from a river-boarding accident in Queenstown – to finally prod a reluctant government to take action.

The proposed regulations are not an over-zealous Nanny State response but a minimum measure needed to weed out a few cowboys in order to protect New Zealand's "branding" as a global adventure tourism mecca and, immeasurably more importantly, the lives of New Zealanders and visitors alike.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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