$3.8 Million Committed to Toilets, Government Finally Flush

The Government has allocated $3.8 million from the International Visitor Levy to upgrade public toilets in the Mackenzie and Queenstown Lakes districts. The official announcement was titled “Relieving pressure on facilities in tourism hotspots”, proving that somewhere in the Beehive, a communications adviser is having the time of their life.

The spend is framed as a user-pays approach, in which visitors fund the infrastructure that visitors use. This is presented as an innovation, though it is also how paying for things has generally worked. The levy was collected at the border, routed through the machinery of government, and has now emerged, some time later, as toilets.

Tourists in the Mackenzie district can rest assured their contribution to New Zealand is being processed. So, eventually, will everything else.