The Tourism Export Council would like to thank all those tourism, travel and hospitality operators who have signed the “Choose Clean Water Petition”. The team were featured on Seven Sharp last week (11/2/16) and great to see young people so passionate about protecting the freshwater rights of New Zealand. The number one goal is to move the accepted ‘wadeable’ benchmark for water quality to ‘swimmable’.
When talking to media we strategically tried not to talk about dairying or 100% Pure New Zealand as the focus was about clean water legislation. However the media were not very interested in a group of environmentalists doing a tour of New Zealand telling water stories so we took the opportunity re the cows in Lake Taylor story to get their attention. It certainly grabbed their attention and we as an industry have received great coverage re supporting this issue as well as a stellar season reported on international visitor arrivals.
Fish & Game, Forest & Bird, The Morgan Foundation, Sustain News, Environmental Defence Society as well as the Freshwater Foundation are just a few of the organisations who are pleased to see the tourism industry coming to the party and advocating for tighter legislation. TEC has indicated that we would be pleased to be part of the Land & Water Forum advisory group, representing tourism interests which meets several times during the year.
- Here is the Seven Sharp Choose Clean Water team link from 11/2/16
- If you’d like to see our comments, you’ll have to watch Seven Sharp On Demand. The story starts at 9 mins 50 secs with the teams story first
Our work is not yet done. If you have a large workplace, you can order the water drop card petitions by the 100 pack, they will be sent to you and then you can disseminate them. The idea is when we present the petition to Parliament on Tuesday 29 March that we put all the water drops on the steps of Parliament which hopefully will have media continue their interest.
At the moment we are at 8300 on the website and the team has collected another few thousand while on the road. The goal is 10,000 and we are confident it will be reached and exceeded but the more we receive the stronger our case will be. If you have not yet signed the petition we would appreciate you doing so and sharing among your staff, family and friends.