Realpolitik has real cost to New Zealand

When he’s done, Key will surely have differentiated his lush country from its big dry continent neighbour, and tourism – based on what makes New Zealand so special and different – will be the worse for his efforts, making for a much bigger debacle than any dodgy failed bloody tourist slogan the Aussies could ever dream up.
 
Take Kaikoura, a beautiful little coastal town east on New Zealand’s south island, where tourism is the ballast. The town’s main attraction is Whale Watch, a nature tourism company owned by the indigenous Kati Kuri people, which each day charters large boats of sightseers out to spot whales, using sonar equipment, along the way taking in pods of dolphins, seals and their pups on rocks and magnificent albatrosses flying by.
 
(Kai, in case you’re curious, means “eat” and koura means “crayfish”, but locals here advise you to add a soft “d” sound after the “r”, otherwise you’ll be saying “eat bird feathers”. White people or pakeha often fall for this linguistic trap.)
 
Already, the drop in tourist numbers thanks to the global economic downturn has forced the Kaikoura bed and breakfast where we stay onto the market – and if New Zealand’s liberalised mining and whaling policies further harm its tourism industry, wine won’t pick up the slack: many growers are selling up due to overproduction; the number of wineries and vineyards for sale in the Marlborough region, for instance, has risen from about 30 last Christmas to about 150.
 
On the day we arrive in Kaikoura, the sea swells are so fierce that the whale watching trips are cancelled, with refunds or new bookings made. It’s a precarious business at the best of times.
 
When we do go out the next day, the swells are seasick-rough, but we are more than rewarded when we spend 10 minutes watching a sperm whale, called Waiki, spouting water then flipping its tail into the air as it dives.