Wildside - Outdoor Politics

This election, speak up for the outdoors

 

©  Zane Mirfin, Wildside Column, This Election, Speak up for the Outdoors, Nelson Mail, 25 October 2008

It’s election year again and I haven’t heard anything much on TV about hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation issues. As usual, the big political brands of Labour and National are dominating the limelight and the same old debates about the economy, tax cuts, welfare, immigration etc are at the fore. Understandably, people vote for their back pocket and their self-interest but unfortunately, many of the outdoor issues that add quality to our life are conveniently ignored.

In the 2002 general election, Nelson was the genesis of the Outdoor Recreation New Zealand political party, which highlighted the plight of hunters, fishers, four-wheel-drivers and other outdoor enthusiasts. Campaigning on issues such as access, pollution, poisoning, gun control, bureaucratic excesses, marine reserves etc, the Outdoor party raised the political profile of the outdoor people and their loss of rights, resources and opportunities.

Throughout the country, outdoor people were talking in excited whispers about ORNZ but the election-night result was disappointing at 1.28 percent of the total election vote, or about 26,000 individual votes.

Disappointing, when it is generally considered that about 1 million New Zealanders hunt, fish and vote. The West Coast-Tasman electorate had the highest percentage party vote for Outdoor Recreation at 5.3 percent, followed by Nelson and then Kaikoura (Marlborough), perhaps showing that the top of the south is a hotbed of keen hunters, fishers and outdoor people.

Politicians from all other major political parties rushed to adopt similar or plagiarised outdoor policies to neutralise the leakage of votes to Outdoor Recreation and many of these policies exist throughout the political spectrum to this day.
The national director of Fish and Game, Bryce Johnson, commented to me a year or so back that those outdoor policies have helped the Fish and Game organisation immensely on the political front over intervening years because politicians will now actually listen.

In 2005, the Outdoor Recreation Party joined forces with United Future Party, led by Peter Dunne, but small parties got hammered that election as the big political brands of National and Labour turned MMP into a two-horse race.

One of the great things to come out of 2005, before the Outdoor Party expired and imploded through lack of support, was getting to spend time with the current Minister of Revenue, Peter Dunne, of United Future, even getting to take him fishing on the Pelorus River.

Peter Dunne has never forgotten the outdoor man and woman. Just this year, his initiative on the benefits of wild animals (deer, chamois, thar, pigs) has reached fruition and led to the formation of a Big Game Hunting Council and
a Wild Animal Control Advisory Committee. This is great news for hunters because for the first time, we will have meaningful input and a say in how this public resource is managed.

Most politicians are good people on a personal level; the lust for power or control and the baubles of Parliament causing most of the schoolyard problems we see nightly on TV political news. One West Coast hunting mate confided to me that ‘‘politicians are the most genuinely insincere people that I’ve ever met’’.

Whatever your personal beliefs, take the time to outline your personal outdoor issues to your chosen local politician – we can all make a difference, but don’t expect miracles. A media friend of mine once told me that the late David Lange wisely commented in a private moment that ‘‘don’t vote for a politician thinking they will change your life because they will let you down every time’’.

Read any outdoor magazine and the letters to the editor are always a scathing cauldron of criticism of bureaucrats, crown organisations and politicians. Outdoor people make the mistake of complaining to kindred spirits, which in general is a total waste of time, draining everyone’s time, energy and motivation.

If you have a problem, make the effort to write to your local general circulation newspaper. Look how a handful of individuals collapsed the Tasman District Council plan to assist Grace Church in providing a first-rate community facility for Richmond, or how a few Grey Power members have led the charge to derail Nelson City Council plans to rectify decades of infrastructural neglect.

It doesn’t matter if they are right or wrong; it’s the process that sways public opinion.

A politician whose name escapes me once said that one letter in a local paper is unimportant but half a dozen letters on the same topic indicates a problem. If a quarter of a million New Zealanders all wrote to their local newspaper about their opposition to aerial 1080 poisoning, the poison rain would (to borrow a Don Brash term) be ‘‘gone by lunchtime’’.

Outdoor recreationalists have long been facing an outdoor Armageddon as rights, resources and opportunities are undermined, over-ruled or just downright stolen. As an individual, it is your role and responsibility to protect what is special to you personally.  Infighting, backstabbing, complaining, ego and apathy are not going to save our proud outdoor
hunting and fishing heritage.

As the US cartoon figure, Pogo, infamously remarked: ‘‘We have met the enemy and they is us.’’

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