Wading into the murky depths of politics is not something your average mountain biker is into. However with the upcoming Government elections this weekend, MTBNZ has posed a quick set of questions to all the political parties. As yet we have only recieved a response from Kevin Hague of the Green Party. Kevin is a list candidate (no.7) and is the candidate for West Coast - Tasman.

Kevin raises some interesting issues and so with out further ado, here's his well written responses:

1. Currently SPARC funds cycling based on Olympic medal chances, with only 1 Olympic Mountain Biking event (Cross Country) and 160,000 mountain bikes sold each year in NZ, does your party believe this to be the right method of assisting the growth of mountain biking?

It is essential that the Government support both elite and mass-participation sport and recreation. Mass-participation activities have great benefit to Kiwis' quality of life, health and wellbeing. Elite sportspeople, and public interest in their sport, usually come from a strong amateur community base of support. The 'push play' side of SPARC funding seeks to promote basic participation, but there is a range of fantastic MTB and other cycling opportunities between entry-level and elite sport. Clubs and other voluntary organisations play a key role and need to be fostered. The National Party’s pledge to abolish ‘Push Play’ is totally opposed by the Green Party, as this is an important way to move people from inactivity into entry level for many sports.
We also recognise that many mountain bikers are not involved at all in clubs and the more organised side of the sport and the Green Party’s approach would be to work with mountain bikers to work out how best they can be encouraged to ride more, more often, and to bring new participants to the sport. Clearly one important aspect will be access to tracks of varying skill levels in all localities, to enable riders to develop their enjoyment through continual skill development.

2. Bicycles are a very environmentally friendly form of transportation. What would you do to encourage people to ride bicycles? Would you consider an economic incentive to encourage people to buy bicycles?

See Vorb response – the Green Party has an extensive set of proposals for encouraging active transport like cycling. Note that there are existing economic incentives for cycling, e.g. the rising price of petrol which will eventually also include the price of carbon emissions. Currently the benefits of cycling are often negated by safety issues, poor infrastructure, systematic funding discrimination and lack of support for initiatives (e.g. Auckland Harbour Bridge).
The Green Party has not specifically considered a tax incentive (such as that available in Britain) though would be open to further discussion about this. We note that in Britain it has been rorted to produce unintended consequences, and also that with the high number of bike sales in New Zealand, particularly at entry level, buying bikes doesn’t appear to be the problem. Instead we need to encourage people to ride their bikes more, and this might involve some further economic incentives.

3. Cycling and other sports rely heavily on funding from gambling dollars distributed by community trusts. Does your party believe this to be the right model for funding sports clubs?

Absolutely not. This form of funding for sports groups and other community sector organisations exists to buy off the extreme social damage caused by this industry. Green Party policy is to phase out pub pokies and to create a $150M fund at Government level to replace the funding that would otherwise have been available from this source.

4. Health care spending takes up a significant portion of our tax dollars. It’s been shown that an active lifestyle leads to better health and that in turn would lessen the burden on the health care system. What would your party do to encourage people to lead a healthy and active lifestyle?

This is an incredibly important question, because our health services are now in danger of being swamped by chronic disease like diabetes and heart disease. While there is quite a lot of focus now on obesity, many of these diseases can be seen as diseases of inactivity. The Green Party has recently released a Preventative Health Strategy, the centrepiece of which is a fivefold increase in the proportion of health spending that is used to keep people well in the first place (to 10%), including the promotion of physical activity.
Our responses to Vorb and to CAN provide quite a lot of detail about this, but clearly we need to reach people of all ages (because increased activity benefits absolutely everybody) but particularly children and young people, because today’s children are the first generation to actually face a lower life expectancy than their parents due to inactivity and diet. Focus has to be twofold, with an increase to everyday activity (e.g. making it safe for children to cycle or walk to school) and an increase in organised sport. Reality is that many different solutions will be required, and the Green Party will be keen to work with groups like MTBNZ to work out how best we can do this if we gain sufficient parliamentary influence to be able to negotiate our policy into action.

5. Very few parents will let their kids ride a bike to school due to the dangers of accidents with cars. This is leading to unfit, unhealthy kids. How will your party address this issue?

We have actively got behind walking school buses, and encouraging kids riding bikes to school. However, there are major safety issues in many areas. Our transport policy seeks to remedy these by levelling the playing field for cycling infrastructure investment, reducing vehicle speeds around CBDs and schools, etc. The trick here is to turn a vicious cycle into a virtuous one: the more people there are riding bikes, the safer it becomes because traffic volume decreases and drivers become more aware of cyclists. Other countries (e.g. Denmark) may well have something to teach us about this.

[i]6. NZ currently has 11 “Great Walksâ€

I agree that sports clubs shouldnt be going to the pub charities and taking money off them and thus relieving the gambling industries conscience. Not a good look for a sport that should be trying to promote itself as sustainable and with a recreational/social outlook.

Also think the first question re SPARC and the funding emphasis is a good one. I didnt know the Nats were out to abolish "Push Play" either, definitely not getting any of my votes now! SPARC/BikeNZ's elite athelete emphasis is a big issue for ordinary club members and MTBNZ shoud be doing all it can to either distance itself and/or show that it is supporting the rest of MTBrs.

I agree with a lot of the points but at the end of the day will never vote greens because of there position on other important areas.
I also believe "push play" is a waste of tax payer money. An add on a tv does not change how some one behaves IMO. The money would be better spent on making sport cheaper and more accessible. Cycle lanes, mountain bike parks, walk ways and subsidizing sports fees for sports such as hockey, basketball, netball, rugby and many other would be a better use of our money IMO.

So by "scope for multi-day rides", what exactly are the "important conservation values" that must not be compromised? (if this means that mountain biking will be allowed on, for example, the Heaphy it is all good).

I did not start cycling because of push play, SPARC, school sport-if anything, these (especially the last one) were/are a discouragement...

basementdweller wrote: I agree that sports clubs shouldnt be going to the pub charities and taking money off them and thus relieving the gambling industries conscience. Not a good look for a sport that should be trying to promote itself as sustainable and with a recreational/social outlook.

in principle i agree, but i don't think the gambling industry is going to go away jsut because some sports clubs won't take their money so we might as well get some good out of it.

basementdweller wrote:I didnt know the Nats were out to abolish "Push Play" either, definitely not getting any of my votes now!

i would assume that they have some other idea in mind, would be interesting to know what...

National sports policy wrote:National will: Require Sparc to re-prioritise its expenditure. We will seek to move funds away from social marketing, websites, and report writing, into funding sport in schools and clubs

guess that's where the ditch push play comes from - push play is social marketing

http://www.national.org.nz/Article.aspx?articleId=28901

Murray McCully wrote:National will ensure that more of the government's sport spending makes it through to schools and sports clubs at the front line. We will be flexible in our thinking about how that funding is best delivered and distributed. Our guiding priority will be to make sure the dollars spent result in a measurable increase in the number of kids taking part in regular sporting activity

sounds good in principle - as with all political stuff it depends what comes out in the reality

[quote="duzall"] So by "scope for multi-day rides", what exactly are the "important conservation values" that must not be compromised? (if this means that mountain biking will be allowed on, for example, the Heaphy it is all good).



"conservation values" is DOC-speak for natural aspects of a place that are important to conserve. For example narrow singletrack with rare plants lining it would be a palce that has conservation values that are not compatible with riding it. However there are many tracks where riding would not compromise any such values - and, by the way, I'm one of the people MTBNZ's Land Access Committee who have been working away for some years now, first changing the General Policy on National Parks (making it possible to allow bikes in) and now with the Heaphy in our sights.

basementdweller wrote: I agree that sports clubs shouldnt be going to the pub charities and taking money off them and thus relieving the gambling industries conscience. Not a good look for a sport that should be trying to promote itself as sustainable and with a recreational/social outlook.

I'd be interested to see just how far their 150 mil will go across all the clubs, and sporting bodies (and individuals) who currently get trust income - Lion Foundation alone gave out over 50 million last year - so where's the rest of the funding going to come from?

And where is the government going to get the 150 million from? What's going to happen to the taxes on gambling - or the money that's currently given out? People aren't going to stop gambling because it no longer goes back into the community in the form of grants. So the money will still be there - who's going to benefit from it?

basementdweller wrote:
Also think the first question re SPARC and the funding emphasis is a good one. I didnt know the Nats were out to abolish "Push Play" either, definitely not getting any of my votes now! SPARC/BikeNZ's elite athelete emphasis is a big issue for ordinary club members and MTBNZ shoud be doing all it can to either distance itself and/or show that it is supporting the rest of MTBrs.

SPARC do give sport development money to national bodies, so their focus isn't all on Elite. The High Performance funding is based on olympic medal chances, and so it should. Its High Performance, not participation.

The problem Bike NZ has is that SPARC bases this sport development funding on members (people who contribute $ to the nat body)- and at the moment their annual report shows around 7000 licenced riders - which around half of them from Cycling NZ, then BMX NZ and about 300 (maybe) from MTBNZ. Until there is a way for Bike NZ to claim everyone who's on a bike as a member, or at least change sparc's thinking that you don't have to be a member, but a participant, then they will always luck out on the sport development funding to say rugby, where they have 1000's of members because for the majority of people to participate, you have to be a member of a club (obviously a few unaffiliated comps which wouldn't contribute to the overall membership but you get the drift. Shit even Marching has more members than BikeNZ