Making a new freedom camping bylaw for the Queenstown Lakes district has required a ‘‘tightrope balancing act’’, a councillor says.
Speaking before the bylaw was approved at the current council’s final meeting yesterday, Niki Gladding told fellow councillors she was satisfied they had achieved a balance between the community wanting to clamp down on the activity, and the need for a ‘‘legally defensible’’ bylaw.
The council would need to do a good job of educating and communicating with freedom campers to make the bylaw successful, Cr Gladding said.
It had to replace its 2021 bylaw, which was declared invalid by the High Court last year, after a legal challenge by the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association.
However, of the 383 submissions received on the draft bylaw earlier this year, the majority opposed its overall approach, 236 saying it was too permissive.
In his report for councillors, principal policy adviser Luke Place said many of the requests made by those submitters were about adverse impacts the council was not allowed to consider under the Freedom Camping Act.
Cr Cody Tucker said it was a ‘‘classic local government issue’’.
‘‘We’re stuck between what the community wants and the law you have to abide by.’’
The bylaw bans freedom camping in urban areas, including on-road parking spaces, but allows the activity at 15 sites in the district, most of them existing carparks.
The 15 sites have a total of 158 parking spaces.
There are seven sites in Queenstown, three in Wānaka, and one each in Arrowtown, Glenorchy, Gibbston, Kingston and Hāwea.
An extra 50 parking spaces are already provided at the Luggate Red Bridge site, under the umbrella of the Reserves Act.
The bylaw also allows freedom camping on the district’s rural roads, in ‘‘any area off the active road corridor’’, such as laybys, something the majority of respondents opposed.
Councillors were told a blanket ban on rural roads was not allowed by the Act, and it was not feasible to make site-specific assessments, and produce maps, of where on the district’s 550km of rural roads freedom camping was possible.
Cr Matt Wong said that was an example of why the Act was ‘‘not fit for purpose for the district’’, and why the bylaw did ‘‘not make a lot of sense’’.
Cr Esther Whitehead said the bylaw would seem ‘‘bizarre and convoluted’’ to anyone with no knowledge of the history of the issue, but without it, the council would have no ability to control freedom camping.
Community services general manager Kenneth Bailey said there was a ‘‘tension’’ between the permissiveness of the Act and the inability of the council to consider the impacts of freedom camping on private property and other land not controlled by the council.
That was particularly the case in a district where tourism was central to the economy and the community was concerned about freedom camping.
The bylaw comes into effect on December 1.
