Joseph Mooney - MP for Southland
It has been very busy with school holidays in Queenstown, and I would like to take a moment to thank everyone who has been working hard to look after our visitors.
The weather also played its part with a cold snap bringing some much needed snow to our ski fields, but otherwise the sun shone consistently most of the time.
The ski fields are an important part of the social and economic fabric of our region, attracting many people to visit during the winter months, as well as a place for locals to exercise and connect with our mountainous environment and each other.
I love the mountains and am a very keen skier (although one of my children encouraged me last winter to dust off my snowboard), and am a big fan of the programmes schools in our region run to give our local kids a taste of snowsports - which may well become a lifelong passion.
The Whakatipu Ski Club also does a great job of facilitating ski & snowboard lessons for children, getting as many kids as possible out there on the snow, and creating a friendly family atmosphere to assist local families enjoy the mountains.
Although it has been busy, and I won’t be alone in having had trouble finding a car park at times, it is also a reminder of how important tourism is for our region and our country.
New Zealand currently has the biggest current account deficit in the OECD. That means we buy more than we sell to the world, and in other words are living beyond our means as a nation. We need to sell more to the world to rebalance our current account deficit, and tourism will play a key role in this.
Not only that, but New Zealand currently faces a recession, and tourism has been credited with helping limit that economic downturn. We have certainly seen that in our region with it being the only place in the country that bucked the trend in terms of a nation-wide downturn in house prices.
Our visitor ecosystem and economy is one of he backbones of our region and of New Zealand. With that we also need infrastructure that is fit for both locals and visitors, including good mixed-modal transport systems and enough housing.
We also need ongoing investment in quality visitor-focused infrastructure and it has been great to see Skylines new gondolas in action.
We also need a strong connected community, and it has been fantastic to see another example of that this winter with the Arrowtown community coming together to create the Bush Creek ice skating rink for everyone to enjoy.
