In the resort with Regulation Ministry chief executive Grainne Moss to speak at a Queenstown Business Chamber of Commerce lunch — largely focused on regulation — Mr Seymour was asked by Destination Queenstown chairman Richard Thomas to set the record straight with his colleagues.
“This region wants to supercharge tourism and growth, but we need the public sector to pony up the infrastructure and the brick and mortar to enable us to do it.
“We can’t do the roading and water and sewage and hospitals ourselves.
“That is a Wellington job.”
Mr Thomas said almost every minister who had visited the Queenstown Lakes recently had told community leaders there was a narrative in Wellington the region was “anti-growth”.
When asked by Mr Seymour, who said he was “a bit surprised by that”, what reasoning was being given for that sentiment, Mr Thomas said he could not answer.
But he estimated investment from the private sector in the district, since Covid-19, was “north of $1.5 billion”, and noted that would not have occurred if the region was against growth.
Meanwhile, Queenstown Lakes Mayor Glyn Lewers told Mr Seymour the district council was investing $470 million over the next decade to improve “tourism infrastructure”, and spending just under $1b in growth infrastructure over the same period.
“And for a population base of only 52,000, that is a tremendous investment.
“And all that GST we create … doesn’t come here.”
Mr Seymour said while Act had campaigned on GST sharing on construction, what it did not expect “was to be looking down the barrel of a $17b deficit in year two”, which was about where it was now.
“In the long term, I still want to see that happen … I don’t know if that will happen in this Budget, it may happen in the next Budget.
“It’s just a question of getting our own house in order — fit your own mask first.”
Meanwhile, Milford Sound Tourism chairman Roger Wilson told Mr Seymour the government would struggle to use tourism to rebuild the economy unless it freed up the problems.
“We’ve got 3800 concessions in the [Department of Conservation] overdue, some of them up to a decade; Milford is stymied, has been for a decade, we can’t do a damn thing there.
“And here we are saying ‘let’s build tourism’.
“So the government’s going to [have to] put a lot of emphasis on solving these impediments to tourism, quickly, if they want to achieve that goal for the good of New Zealand.”
