New Zealand Executive Government Speech Archive

I am delighted to be here this morning to launch this informative leaflet, Keeping Safe in New Zealand. Tourism today is one of our greatest growth areas, with the benefits currently for New Zealand meaning a total of $4.8 billion in foreign exchange earnings, and sustaining approximately 250,000 jobs. By the year 2000, these figures are estimated to reach $9 billion and 364,000 jobs respectively. As a result of the phenomenal growth in the tourism sector since 1991, we see many positive initiatives and partnerships emerging.

One recent example is with the New Zealand Tourism Board helping Police to better understand the tourism industry. The Board recently ran a KiwiHost course for around forty constables and gave them some tips on making our overseas visitors feel more welcome. This leaflet is another example of a positive initiative. I am always encouraged when communities can work together on projects, and here today, we have the Canterbury Tourism Industry working alongside Police and Harcourts through our Crime Prevention Programme. My thanks to all the participants for both their contribution and goodwill in supporting crime prevention.

The impetus for this leaflet, though produced nationally, came from an ad hoc group which has been meeting in Christchurch over several years. This group includes Police, local tourism industry members and the Christchurch City Council. It was through this group that a need for helping visitors to keep themselves safe when they came to New Zealand, was identified. New Zealand is without a doubt a wonderful place to visit and we are fortunate in enjoying a diversity of scenery and opportunities ranging from activities for the very adventurous to more restful and relaxing pursuits. However, people need to know about taking sensible precautions and we can help by providing accurate and easily understood information.

The majority of New Zealanders do not want to see our visitors come to any harm and certainly to not be victims of crime and violent situations. Keeping our visitors safe not only enhances New Zealands international reputation but we feel happy that they can return home with happy memories of their visit. We all know that any incident or violence can have a huge impact overseas, not just for families and friends, but also through the media reporting the facts. With todays electronic media, a story is worldwide news as soon as the details are known.

Recent tragedies further highlight this, the hot air balloon accident here in Christchurch, white water rafting accidents in Queenstown and small aircraft accidents too. New Zealand has a very good record of safety and one must keep the accidents in perspective when tourism is such a growth area and the number of tourists keep rising. But we must continue to work towards making our country safer. We all feel for the Japanese student beaten in a street robbery, or the German couple in Auckland having their campervan stolen. Unfortunately, the criminal element in our society see visitors as easy targets. That is why this leaflet is an important step in helping our visitors to keep themselves safe.

The tips are sensible and helpful and enable our visitors to be informed without scaring them. I think it would be of considerable benefit to have the leaflet handed out on incoming aircraft with other documentation which is required. This is already happening as an initiative between local television and two of our smaller airlines.

Assistance is already being provided by embassies and High Commissions to translate the leaflet so that as many different nationalities as possible are helped. I understand that it is hoped to have copies of the leaflet available in a number of different languages by the end of the year. Keeping Safe in New Zealand is a further example of how our Safer Communities programme is working successfully. It reflects co-operation and partnership and I always welcome projects and initiatives which show this.

My congratulations to everyone involved for seeing this need, and finding a way to meet it. I am very pleased to announce Keeping Safe In New Zealand officially launched, and may it be widely read.