Outdoor Industry Connect & Share Forums
Outdoor Industry Connect & Share Forums
National Parks Fee Overhaul: What You Need to Know
The future of camping, events, and commercial activities in NSW National Parks is undergoing significant change. In this illuminating session, senior representatives from National Parks and Wildlife Service unveil proposed reforms to fee structures that could reshape how we all interact with these treasured natural spaces.
Linda and Christian walk us through the first major fee overhaul in nearly a decade, introducing a tiered camping system ranging from free basic sites to premium facilities at $89 per night. The reforms aim to solve persistent problems like "ghost bookings" while investing additional revenue back into improved facilities and services. The proposal features seasonal pricing to encourage off-peak exploration and a simplified fee structure focused on site-based rather than per-person charges.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when stakeholders raise concerns about unintended consequences. Climbers highlight potential 540% fee increases at remote locations with hot showers but low visitation. Commercial operators question whether their existing licenses should provide camping benefits. School group leaders seek clarity on how the changes will affect educational excursions that introduce young people to our natural heritage.
Beyond camping, proposed increases to event permits and filming/photography fees aim to achieve cost recovery after years without updates. The agency emphasizes its commitment to making NSW "film-friendly" while ensuring taxpayers aren't subsidizing commercial activities.
What emerges is a thoughtful dialogue about the true cost of maintaining our parks and who should bear that burden. With consultation open now, this episode provides essential context for anyone who camps, teaches, leads tours, or conducts business in our national parks. The changes could fundamentally alter the economics of outdoor recreation in NSW - making this a must-listen for industry professionals and outdoor enthusiasts alike.
ONSWACT will work with members to provide guidance on how the fees can consider the industry's needs.
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Welcome to the Outdoors New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory Weekly Outdoor Industry Connect and Share Forum, where ideas thrive, collaborations spark and our industry comes together to grow. Let's connect, share and make an impact. This episode is recorded live with our professional outdoor friends and provided post-event as a resource for the outdoor industry. And provided post-event as a resource for the outdoor industry.
Speaker 2:Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us for another Connect and Share on a Friday morning. I'm actually coming to you from Durrawall country today. A little bit different scenery, jumping around, getting a lot of things done. It's a very busy time at the moment. But before we jump into the news of today, may I pay my respects to elders, past, present and those emerging into our space and using country as the teacher, which, yeah, it's great to see so much happening in that space and I hope to see a lot more as we work with our First Nations people.
Speaker 2:So let me jump into some of the news of today before we get on to our main topic. And, as you may all know, our main topic is some special guests from the National Parks and Wildlife Service of New South Wales. So we'll get to Linda and Christian in a little while, but before we do, let's jump into the news. David, I might call on you now because today is a very somber day for a lot of people that knew Colin Abbott, and I'd just like you to give us a little bit of insight into Colin's life, who we're celebrating his life today at his funeral in Victoria.
Speaker 3:Yes, I'm down in Melbourne heaven forbid going to a memorial service for Colin and Colin was one of those amazing outdoor educators that worked at the strategic team but also made things happen operationally. He was very involved not only in outdoor education, such as the formation of Outdoor Victoria, a lot of work with the VOEA and Outdoor Education Australia or its predecessors, but also things like the corporate adventure training network when that was big. So he did a lot of things and brought people together to do projects. Interestingly, his last project was how do we keep and record all of the things that have happened in the past in the outdoor industry, both the paper documents and maybe verbal stuff from recordings from people, and he hadn't finished that before he passed away, so I think that's maybe a project we should continue in his honour.
Speaker 2:Thank you for sharing and thoughts, of course, with all those that knew Colin and his family and friends on this day. So thank you, colin, for everything you've contributed to the outdoor industry. So just a couple of reminders for everyone that your portal is where you can find absolutely everything that you have access to If you're a community member, if you've attended our events, if you've done some of our training. It's all in the one portal and you can access that as a member of Outdoors NSW and ACT. Of course, you have access to a lot of other different things, as you can see there, the portal's on the left, which is always being updated with new and interesting items and useful items. You've also got access to the jobs portal, which is free for members $55 for every other person that wants to put an ad up there, but free for members. So if you've got jobs available, great place to put them. And, of course, our website, which is public facing. You can advertise your business and your activities and get more people interested in what you're doing. Don't forget too every time you click on something or a particular resource, open your emails. You're earning PD points with us with your membership with Outdoors New South Wales and ACT and every year we have awards, and this year they're going to be closing off at 1 June, so you've still got a little time to wrap up some of those award points to see if you'll be in the running for some of our most engaged members this year, which will be celebrated at the summit.
Speaker 2:And there's a little bit about Colin. As Dave said, he certainly brought a lot of expertise and experience to our industry and leaves a wonderful legacy behind. Don't forget, we've got the Cultural Awareness Program now available for all those that are doing the Pinnacle Leadership. You're getting that absolutely free. And, of course, our committee members who dedicate so many hours as volunteers. You also get access to this program for free. We've had quite a few others come in and take advantage of the half price rate for members. So this is going to give you a bit of an insight into a little bit more about the Indian, the Muslim, the Chinese, lgbtiq plus and, of course, aboriginal cultures, give you a little few tips to bring into your workplace and getting more people outdoors more often and being a bit more culturally sensitive. The AAAS review is now underway. So if you missed the emails, if you missed the blog articles, please jump onto the website and register for updates and join the engagement platform. So if you're familiar with engagement platforms, this is where a lot of the content will be shared, a lot of discussions will happen and all the events and briefings that will be going on will be posted onto that platform. So jump onto that website, click through the review and sign up for all of the news via the engagement platform.
Speaker 2:Destination New South Wales still has some experience workshops happening for the rest of the year, which is a great opportunity if you're looking to enhance some of your tourism aspect of your business and look at some of the things that might suit today's visitors when they come to New South Wales. The next one's in Maitland on the 13th of May and they do run right through June as well, with a virtual workshop at the end of June. So if you can't get to any of the locations, the virtual workshop might be the best one for you. Our outdoor learning mini conference is set to run in September in Canberra. Now, this is very hands-on. It's information share, it's skill share, where teachers and facilitators of outdoor experiences for kids come together and share their knowledge. If you want to present at this, you need to get your presentation or your expression of interest in before the 15th of May, and you can do so via that link there. And for those listening to the recording only, let me just read that out for you it's https//outdoorscartra with a K K-A-R-T-R-A dot com, slash survey, slash O-L-M-C, which stands for Outdoor Learning Mini Conference 25, e-o-i, and you can do it in various forms. You can present a pedagogy popcorn, which is an eight minute talk about what has worked for you. You can present for 30 minutes or you can do a workshop for an hour. So if you're interested in any of those, make sure you jump in and register to present.
Speaker 2:This is in the final couple of weeks of the Tidbinbilla review. So this is ACT Parks and they're looking at the reserve management plan. If there's something to do with that plan that you don't think is quite right or needs a bit of alteration, we want to hear from you. Certainly we have some feedback we'll be sending through before the close date, which is Friday, the 16th of May. So if you have any feedback, please copy us in so we can support you in that submission. The PD sessions there is still some available this year. So if you're wanting to support your staff or even yourself in doing some refreshes in abseiling, canoeing, even outdoor ed for non-outdoor ed teachers. These are all available on our website in the PD sessions page and you also get some amazing points for your PDs if you attend some of those courses.
Speaker 2:Now the ACA Australian Camps Association have just released their own camp census. So, as you all well know, we do our annual census for New South Wales and ACT on the whole industry. Now the Australian Camps Association has released their inaugural census to look at just the camp sector and that is nationally. So if you have a hard top and part of that part of the industry, jump in and make sure you get your completed census in by the 6th of June. And this of course goes towards advocacy efforts and much needed data to support understanding trends affecting our industry. But understanding trends affecting our industry.
Speaker 2:You've heard this before, but TAFE New South Wales have let us know that they will no longer be running the roping units as part of the outdoor leadership call. This has sent a whole heap of action in train here and through our partners in advocating for its return but also preparing for what the industry needs in these types of losses. So we met with the Blue Mountains industry a week before last yes, is that right? No, last week, it was last week and discussed impacts with them. So that was great content to help us get some more points and tips through. And I'll be meeting with the Skills Minister next week so we'll keep you updated on how that proceeds.
Speaker 2:The summit is in July and, again, probably something you don't know, but the program has now been released. So if you want to see exactly who's talking, when they're talking and all the nitty-gritty information around the program, it is now available on the website so you can jump on there have a look. And a huge thanks to our partners, not only NatCorps, which is bringing you the Risk and Resilience Outdoor Symposium on the first day, but of course, the Australian Government, canberra Convention Bureau, affinity Insurance Brokers, equipped Outdoors, the ACT Government, medibank for giving us our free skin checks at the summit, paddy Pallon, skillsiq and Cycle Canberra for an amazing experience the day before it all starts. So you can see their amazing array of supporters of this event, very happy to have them all on board and supporting this year's summit, and you'll also hear from some amazing people in the program and there's a snapshot of some of them just there. Here's a little bit of an idea of what the program includes, but I urge you to jump on, because you'll get a really good feeling as you look at the three days of line-up of content to see if it's going to be relevant to you. Don't forget as members, you do get $50 off per day, so make sure you get your code off your membership portal and put it into the checkout as you go through the process.
Speaker 2:Outdoors Victoria running their conference on the 14th and 15th of August in Bendigo, victoria Tickets are also now available for that one too. So if you are more in the education space, this is certainly one where there's a lot of content around education. Thank you for joining us. Before we jump into anything else, I'm going to hand over to Linda and Christian to take us through what's happening with national parks and wildlife at the moment, and there's some changes on the horizon. So, linda, over to you.
Speaker 5:Thank you. Just give me a moment and hopefully I will be able to share my PowerPoint. That's perfect. Can you see that? Yep, great, okay, that's perfect. Um, can you see that? Yep, great, okay. Look. Thanks everybody for the opportunity today for christian and I to give you an overview of um, a process that's happening at the moment. Some of you may be aware, some of you not, so we'll we'll take you through, if you can bear with us for 10 minutes or so, a little bit of a powerpoint, just by way of introduction. Um, I'm the manager of tourism partnerships and events, so I can see we've got some parks eco pass operators on the line, so my, my team, oversee the parks eco pass operator program. Um, I also have a team of people who manage major events across national parks and the filming and photography process, and I'm going to just quickly defer to Christian to introduce himself.
Speaker 6:Thank you for having us. My name is Christian Luckner. I'm the manager of the customer service team. We look after the contact centre, as well as bookings and camping and accommodation in national parks.
Speaker 5:Thank you, okay, I'm just going to see if I can click through. You know, it's always that thing, that one thing. There we go the scope of today in relation to fees and we wanted to make this really clear because when we talk about fees in a major agency, everybody thinks it's everything wanted to make this really clear, because when we talk about fees in a major agency, everybody thinks it's everything. The focus is going to be in terms of our fee reform, or has been in terms of our fee reform, events and venue hire, filming and photography permits and camping fees. So I'm going to cover the first two and then and then Christian will we'll talk about the camping fees. What's not on today's agenda, or even in any kind of, I guess, focus, if you like, in terms of fees, is park entry fees. At the moment, um, that's, that's something that's not being considered here. Accommodation, um, market based that's another area where christian works in. So the hard roofed accommodation, that's not in consideration. The park seco pass as many of you know, we had a major reform in 2021, so not in scope. Leasing and licensing no. And also fees, you may also be aware, set by jointly managed parks, part for a board. Set these fees, so some may choose to come along and align with our fees. Some may not, so that's out of scope as well.
Speaker 5:So why are we doing this? What are our goals here? The main thing, our main outcome, is to ensure that we've got fair and consistent, as well as transparent, based fees that are based on service levels Cost recovery is really important, as you can well imagine are based on service levels. Cost recovery is really important, as you can well imagine, ultimately, it's the taxpayer that wears the burden of ensuring that we have cost recovery. Where we don't, it really does place a burden on the broader community. So we want cost recovery, particularly in relation to tours, events, filming and licensing, reasonable user contributions towards what are considered optional services things like camping, accommodation, venue hire and entry into attractions and I think the important point here is to make up front. We need to ensure we've got routine CPI adjustments to ensure the predictability. One of the challenges over many, many years is that our agency has not done that and therefore we've got a bit of catching up to do so. That really kind of sets the context here In terms of events and venue hire and we're talking about all kinds of events here.
Speaker 5:So large-scale events basically happen. When we talk about large-scale events, it's generally events over 150 people participants. They haven't been updated since 2015. And the smaller-scale events so things like where you've got between 40 and 150 people and it's anything from you know a smaller running event or a group activity whereby you know there's a group coming on to park to do something. That was updated in 2019. So there's two different fee structures there the proposed changes for and then there's the venue hire. Sorry, so venue hire we'll get into in a minute, but it's everything from a picnic shelter through to an actual site. So, for example, we have a lot of weddings on park, in particular, sydney Harbour National Park and Bradley's Head is a key site which we regard as an outdoor venue for weddings. So the proposed changes we're going to increase application. Well, we hope to increase this is a consultation process, so it's not confirmed Application, venue hire and per participant fees for large-scale events by around 32% and I know that sounds incredibly high, but it's in order to achieve cost recovery and essentially to catch up after many, many years of over 10 years of not doing so.
Speaker 5:That relates predominantly to the large-scale events and to venue hire. We want to add some fees, not because we really want to, because we need to actually to discourage late applications Particularly. Again, we're talking large-scale events. I'm not sure if anyone on this call is involved in that, but we do get huge events like SailGp on the harbour and lots of ultra triathlons and ironman events well over 150 of those and it's it's really relating to to that and we just need to also make sure that that we have a balance in terms of the events so we will have a lower fee for weekdays and quiet parks. So there are high use and low use parks. I'm not going to go through all of this, but it probably will give a bit of a snapshot.
Speaker 5:So when we talk about venues, as I said just before, it can be anything from a picnic shelter right through to something much more bespoke that and when we talk about bespoke, we're talking about locations like shark island and clark island, again in sydney harbour national park, and often many of those are for major functions, events, picnic sorry birthday parties and everything else. So that's when we start talking about bespoke. In terms of sporting events in particular, which is our most popular type of event, we can have everything from again, a low-use park and you know it might be a case of 160 people. So the fees are going to range. But the most important thing is, if these fees are approved, they will all be published and that's, I think, the really important point. We do have a lot of them already on our website, if you were to go to the National Parks website and look up events. But it's really about making sure, moving forward right down to venue hire, that everyone's really clear about annual fees. And, just as an example there, a couple of examples. So a family books, a picnic shelter for a party of 50 people. It could range anything from, you know, a more quiet park with less facilities right through to a whiz bang shelter in Lane Co. So anything from 83 to 400 plus dollars. Usually what that means it's not in relation to so much you know the park itself, but it can also be more the facilities that are on offer. And there's another example there that ranges for, you know, 200 people with a running event, a less utilised area 917, a high use area on weekends could be around $3,000. Around three thousand dollars.
Speaker 5:Filming and photography, um, which is another core part of the work that we do. Um, really importantly with this one, um. There is a premier's memorandum, um, that's that's very, very clear about making new south wales film film friendly. National parks and wildlife service works with a lot of film producers and we work really closely with screen new south wales um to encourage but also make sure that we look after filmmakers when they come on to park. We get around 508 film permits, or we certainly did in 2023 and 24. It's about that.
Speaker 5:It ranges between 500 and 600 annually and again, our fees haven't been updated since 2009. So we want to make sure here, as per the memorandum, making New South Wales film friendly we are only recovering costs. So, really importantly, we've aligned all of our fees, any changes, with local government, screen New South Wales just to make sure we've come up to speed there, because we really haven't been. Our fees are only paid on large commercial shoots, which is around 60%, and we waive fees for the very small shoots and I'll show you a snapshot in a minute and also travel media. So where we've got major promotional activity through Destination New South Wales and Tourism Australia that's promoting national parks in New South Wales, we do waive those fees as well. We are increasing the application fee and I'll show you that in a minute by 100% to cover costs and there is an hourly rate for additional staff time that we've increased because obviously wages have gone up.
Speaker 5:So I'll just sort of move that screen a little bit if I can. You can. Probably you're not seeing this, but I've got half my screen missing here. So, for example, in terms of the types of film activities we have, a small shoot is a really simple thing. It's usually one or two crew, you know, handheld camera one hour. We're not going to charge for that. We do actually ask you to apply and that's really important to obviously have a sense of making sure that we've got an indication of where you propose your activities.
Speaker 5:It's really when we start getting into what we call the low, medium, high impact and again we've tried to align these as much as we can with local government, but also Screen, nsw and we've taken them through this we start getting into a different sort of fee, I guess, process. So, low impact, it's $350 or it's proposed to be $350. That's where we've got minimal construction and a couple of hours and then we move up the scale. So if we go for it to the high impact, that's generally your large film productions We've just had the artful dodger and we're about to have the artful dodger film back in sydney harbour national park shortly. So big productions all day and it's it gets up to around 830 dollars.
Speaker 5:There's some other fees there. For example, um 110 dollars an hour for additional assessment supervision site. Some of these big productions in particular can take literally days of staff time to make sure we've got closures and all sorts of things in place and that visitors are kept safe while filming happens. So that is a standard fee that we're proposing for basically staff that are working directly with film companies. And there's a $166 drone application. So, just as two quick examples there, a company with 50 crew and talent shooting an advertising campaign, which happens a lot and requires supervision, for six hours would pay $1,490. So that's the application fee plus any supervision. But when it comes to things like weddings, we're really kind to brides. A photographer taking wedding photos needs permission but does not pay fees, and often when a bride and groom are actually applying, for example, for a small scale event in bradley's to conduct a wedding, that gets included as part of their their application Activity licences.
Speaker 5:Some of you may be familiar, some not. There's no fee increase in this at all. What we've done here and it's actually been approved by our Deputy Secretary is we've been looking at other types of activities that occur on PARC and, as you know, predominantly the PARC SIGO Pass program really has focused on just guided tours. But we have other commercial activities on parks that haven't really fitted into anything, things like equipment hire. We get lots of kayak hire, for example, within parks. It could be supported Hire. Sorry, can you still hear me? Sorry, I've just got a message saying that I've got a problem with the sound it just changed to a different mic, but we can hear you I'll just go back in.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yep, perfect, okay, thank you, I don't know what's happened there. I've got very strange headphones. I think they need replacing. So what we've done is we've incorporated activity licensing into the Parks Eco Pass program. We've had a couple of examples in the last couple of years. So transport licenses, for example. There was one for Murramarang National Park. We've just launched the Gijam Gulgani Walk in the Tweed Byron area and we were successful in securing a transport provider. So that's an activity license, a different, a different license, but it comes under the same times of types of fees and conditions. So that's what that's all about. We wanted to give consistency to to that particular license activity. I'm going to hand over to Christian now, especially as my headphones are not playing well. Over to you.
Speaker 6:Thank you, linda. I'm going to talk you through the proposed changes to camping fees. The changes are currently open for public consultation on the have your Say webpage haveyoursaynswgovau. Forward slash camping, where you can submit, and there's three forms of submission that are currently available. There's an online quick survey, you can upload a submission through the portal or you can post in your submission. I'll encourage you to do so because we'd like to get lots of diverse views about our camping fees.
Speaker 6:New South Wales National Parks currently experiences around 1.8 million overnight stays. Our fees were last updated back in 2017. Since then, we have had a change during COVID, where all free campgrounds became bookable with a basic booking fee, but there have been no changes to camping fees in national parks since eight years ago. We're trying to solve some of the persistent or emerging issues, such as ghost bookings and no-shows, that is, people making a booking but then not showing up. We want to also solve some of our complex pricing that we currently have. We have site fees, person fees, booking fees. We also want to solve consistency. Our camping fees can be fairly inconsistent across the state, where campgrounds with similar facilities near or next to each other have very different fees. Our customers are telling us that they would like to see more staffing in our campgrounds and they'd like to see our maintenance levels improved. We're proposing if we go to the next slide, linda, we're proposing to make some changes based on feedback that we have received. We survey all of our campus. At the end of this day, we have over 220,000 survey responses. We also went out to our most frequent campus, which is about 5,500, 2,000 of whom have responded back in 22-23, 2,000 of whom have responded back in 2022-23 to put the idea of proposed solutions to them, and they've provided valuable input into that proposal as well. We also consulted with around 200 staff within national parks that manage campgrounds.
Speaker 6:We want to standardise the fees on a tiered basis, and that relates to the facilities, the services and the demand for each of the CAM grants. We want to simplify the fee to a per-site fee rather than the current combination of site fees, booking fees and person fees, and remove the booking fees and the extra person fees. That means that visitors don't need to update their bookings when their circumstances change. It also reduces our work to count campers and work out who is actually staying and if there's any additional fees due, and collect those additional fees. We want to make our most basic campgrounds free for those that don't want to book and pay, but also reduce the expectation what services are available in those locations. When we did our survey around, about 87% of respondents told us that they would like to be able to book and 13% of respondents didn't want to book. Able to book and 13% of respondents didn't want to book. We want to have clear low and high season pricing to encourage dispersal. High season could be different in different locations, such as the coast could be summer, easter, potentially September, october holidays, whereas inland it may be autumn and spring and the snow it could be winter, whereas inland it may be autumn and spring and the snow it could be winter. We want to increase refunds and that's to solve some of the ghost bookings to 80% up to three days prior to arrival, to encourage people to cancel their booking if the circumstances change, as well as give a 50% refund for people that book within three days, including people that leave early and let us know that they have left early so we can resell the site to someone else. Any revenue we collect from camping, accommodation or across the estate in National Park gets retained by National Parks under the Act and what we're proposing is to reinvest any additional revenue back into campground servicing and maintenance.
Speaker 6:Here are the fees as they are proposed. They are per campsite, per night, as you can see, from tier one here being free, all the way up to tier six, which are more caravan park style facilities, including hot showers, ablution blocks up to $89 per night. You also have here a column of what the current average paid per tier is and then what it would be if we had applied the CPI on an annual basis. In addition to those fees, we're proposing to have small sites that are for one or two people. They're a bit smaller. They could be awkward shaped. They're 25% less.
Speaker 6:We have group sites in some of our campgrounds and we want to encourage groups to make use of group sites rather than set up in the middle of the campground amongst other campers, because the impact of groups on other people can be significant. Therefore, the group sites we're proposing to be a multiple of a standard site but also be 25% discounted. Premium sites in our campgrounds are sites that have power or they have additional services or facilities. They may have hardened sites that may be extra large. Those sites are proposed to be 20% more, and we're saying that a high season is roughly 90 days a year, so about 13 weeks where high season fees would apply. For the majority of the year, it would be at the low season pricing.
Speaker 6:The impact that the proposed prices are having in most cases is that they are more expensive in high season compared to what they are now, but that they are cheaper in lower season. It also encourages people to share sites and to make use of the savings that are available at the moment. When I go to examples, if we have two groups of people that are booking a site, for adults, for example, they pay the same fee if they're staying in two sites or they would share a site. Under the new fees, it would be half the price to share the site. So here are the benefits that we're trying to achieve is to reduce ghost bookings and no-shows, that campers think twice about booking more than what they need. There's a financial motivation to share the sites, as I've just mentioned, and to also cancel when their plans change.
Speaker 5:Christian, sorry to interrupt you. David has a question. Yeah, David, to interrupt you. David has a question.
Speaker 6:Yeah, david. Do you want to ask the question now or do you want to hold it until we come to the end?
Speaker 3:No, I'll actually hold it now, because you were talking about ghost bookings and some of the problems with how people use the camping system in New South Wales. In Victoria, our Premier made all camping free across the estate and we have exactly the same problems, but it's actually being blamed on the free camping instead of fee-for-service. I've got a suspicion, because you've got the same problems as Victoria has, that the change in how the society thinks about things like camping and doing stuff is actually a problem, and I don't think we're identifying that by in Victoria and perhaps not in New South Wales. Maybe that's something you could both talk about and say what is the actual problem, rather than whether you're charging or not charging and how much you're charging. I think it's some other issue that goes to stuff. Yeah, just a thought thank you, david.
Speaker 6:Yeah, we are trying to have a slightly different approach and that's where we make our campgrounds free. It would be on a first-come basis. We were considering making those campsites bookable, but we're seeing the prevalence of ghost camping in two locations, one being where there currently is a $6 booking fee only and that you can stay for a whole week for $6. We do see people booking the whole of winter in Kosciuszko, but they may be there two weekends in winter and the rest of the time the site is vacant. We did run a trial as well of messaging people and SMSing them and asking them are you still coming? We did get the responses and actually worked on that and unfortunately that did not work. People were responding yes, but the sites were still empty. We are also seeing ghost camping in the coastal campgrounds around Christmas, where people book a week before they intend to arrive and have to stay vacant for the first week and then arrive later down the track, and I don't mind paying the fees, but generally we see a when there's a financial motivation, we see the ghost camping issue reduced and, judging by the media and what you mentioned there about Victoria, it didn't seem to have been such a problem in Victoria until camping became free. So I think there is a correlation between fees and the encouragement of that behavior and discouragement by fees and financial motivation to update your booking and cancel.
Speaker 6:Getting back to the presentation here, the encouraging dispersal through low and high season pricing is one of the benefits we are anticipating to where people have the ability to move their travel pattern. It would be cheaper for them to travel in low season, fully understanding that some people are not able to travel in low season, particularly families with school-aged children. They might have to travel in high season a lot of the time but by removing the extra person fee and the extra child fee, we're giving them an incentive in high season. Whilst they're paying a higher base fee, they can bring in additional people without having to pay extra. The simplified pricing will also reduce the sense of having drip pricing currently, where you start off with one fee but once you have added on your booking fee, your extra person fee, you could end up with a significantly different fee. We want to save campers having to log in and change their numbers and staff having to count people. We want to provide options to those that don't want to book or want to go on the spur of the moment and people that don't want to pay and feel that they want a basic camping experience and get out into nature without having a financial impact. We want to use any additional funds to provide better services and improve maintenance.
Speaker 6:If we go to the example on the next slide, as I mentioned before, for most campers fees would increase in high season but be cheaper in low season. A family of four would currently pay $68 in a beachfront campground. With the proposed tiered system they'll pay $89 in high season or $54 in low season. Friends that like to go hiking together into remote campgrounds currently pay a booking fee of $6. And another proposed system, we wouldn't have a booking fee and wouldn't have bookings for those campgrounds. But we do encourage people to fill in a trip intention form, particularly in remote areas, so we know that they are on park in case there is an emergency and we can start that. They are on park in case there is an emergency and we can start. Their friends and family would know that they are on park and they could initiate a rescue, which has happened in the past. Another example here is where we have a retired couple that currently pays in a moderate facility campground $34.85 per night on the coast. Under a proposed system it would go up to $54 in January, but if they moved their travel to February they'd only pay $28. Similarly, two couples I've mentioned that example before currently would book adjacent sites because it's the same price $24.60 per site, a total of $49.20. And under the proposed system they would either pay $40 per night for two sites or, if they share a site out of peak season, they could reduce the expenditure to $20 a night.
Speaker 6:As Linda mentioned before in the introduction, jointly managed parks are separate. There's two parks that currently have camping that are under the part for a arrangement, which is Waramai Conservation Lands and Matawintji National Park. Those parks have their own board that set the fees and determine the fees, and it will be up to the board to determine whether they want to go with the proposed solution for national parks or determine their own fees. As I mentioned in the beginning, the camping fees are currently open for consultation on the haveusanswgovau forward slash camping website and I'd like to encourage you and your members to go onto the website and either respond via the survey, upload a submission or post in the submission. That's all I want to take you through, so now we can go to questions.
Speaker 2:Wonderful.
Speaker 6:I saw quite a few popped up.
Speaker 2:Yes, there's a couple in there. Vanessa, do you want to talk to your examples, or would you like me to read them out for you? Are you in a space that you can talk?
Speaker 7:If you can hear me, yes, that you can talk. Uh, if you can hear me, yes, I can talk um. So I'm representing climbers which tend to go to less traveled parks like capitar, warrumbungles um, preamble and so on. A lot of those parks will be now reclassified as tier six because they have hot showers and there's no alternatives often to stay there. For instance, capita only has two campsites. They would both be classified as tier six. We go there regularly. Lots of climbers would go there fairly regularly and the camping fees, as I've outlined there, would increase for a couple by 540% or thereabouts if it was peak time and you haven't really given much clarity as to what peak time is.
Speaker 7:If it's going to be a quarter of the year, that is a substantial disincentive to go there and you know we're often the only people in the campground. Incentive to go there, and you know we're often the only people in the campground when we go there. We contribute significantly to the visitor economy using local resources, groceries, et cetera, petrol. So you know we often would put $1,000 into Narrabri before heading up the mountain. So I don't see how this seems fair and obviously people will be putting in submissions about this, as our organisation will, but it just seems like a system that in all circumstances in regional areas hasn't been necessarily well thought through. It may be entirely appropriate for coastal areas that have high visitation in summer.
Speaker 6:Thank you, thanks for mentioning that particular example. In Warrumbungle, there will be a large range of camping opportunities, from Camp Blackman having hot showers and being a higher level campground, from Camp Blackman having hot showers and being a higher level campground, all the way down to remote walk-in campgrounds that could go as low as tier one or tier two. Mount Capita is a different example, so I'd like you to highlight those in your submission as key concerns so we can then take all feedback on board and work through what you know what the final proposal that we take to government would look like.
Speaker 2:Great. So, Vanessa, I'll work with you and we'll make sure that we feed that back, because there's often examples that you know, once you try to tier a system, get lost, and we've got to make sure we point those out.
Speaker 7:Yeah, I mean it seems quite discriminatory against small families and couples particularly, and singles. Climbers often have group size limitation on how many people can go out and climb and yet they're not being dissuaded from going in a group. The other thing, I mean other sites include Bangonia, I guess, same differences, there's hot showers and so on. There isn't really any alternatives. And I guess my last concern is are you not afraid that this is going to have unintended consequences of people stealth camping because they don't want to pay 89 for a site?
Speaker 2:I think the other way around, not ghost camping, but, um, yes, yeah, christian. Is that something that's been brought up or thought about?
Speaker 6:yes, um, and what I can, what I hear and what we can see from the feedback, is that the we tried to explain of what type of level of facility you would get at each of the levels, but what it seems gets a little bit lost is that at level six you'd expect a hot shower, but there could be a level five or a level four campground and maybe they have higher facilities than what's indicated because they are more out of the way, they are more remote, so they wouldn't be necessarily Capital of Bangonia, as the examples wouldn't necessarily have to be level six because they have a shower If they are quieter and we don't have this pressure to disperse camping the same way we have in some of our coastal campgrounds.
Speaker 2:Okay, great, so maybe we'll let that into the submission too. Vanessa.
Speaker 8:Sure.
Speaker 2:Okay, dylan, over to you.
Speaker 8:So I've just got a couple of questions from your presentation. So the first one in the fee setting goals slide. Early on you talked about cost recovery on activities like tours, but I don't see that that was currently in scope and I just wanted to check that Parks has got the current comments on open feedback about camping, and I didn't miss something about your tours being in the process as well.
Speaker 5:No, they're not part of the process, dylan, because, as you know, we went through an extensive review reform in 2021 where we did look at cost recovery back then. So I think the point of that statement was just to say well, that's part of the picture of when we're looking at anything in relation to fees. It is about cost recovery and park management and putting back into infrastructure and so forth. So there is no proposed increase there. In terms of timeframes and engagement, I was neglectful in saying that.
Speaker 5:So, in terms of engagement for filming and photography, it's a bit of a reactive thing. So we've obviously been talking to a lot of associations and organisations like yourselves that may delve in filming and or events, but we're also talking directly to particularly more impacted stakeholders for events. You know large-scale events like your Ironman Australia that do several big events and rogaining and those sorts of companies. And, in terms of subject to consultation, subject to the ministerial approval, may or may not happen. In terms of events, we wouldn't be looking to do and venue hire anything until bring in um the new fees in 2026, july 1, 2026, but filming and photography subject to ministerial approval would come in from july 1?. Sorry, that's probably a bit more than what you were looking for. That's okay.
Speaker 8:On the community events. So, looking at events and venue hire, will national parks have the freedom to waive fees for community events? I'm thinking like if there was some sort of a it's a terrible example, but if Winter Magic, the Katoomba, you know festival, wanted to hold something on the edge of Echo Point down in Katoomba, would they be able to say, yeah, yeah, look, we want to support our local community and we'll waive that, as opposed to Ultra Trail which takes over the whole national park for the weekend.
Speaker 5:There are so many degrees of events I don't know what the numbers are for that. There are so many degrees of events I don't know what the numbers are for that when it's non-commercial and it's sort of generally under 150 people. It's a small-scale event which would be something that you would apply for directly with the area. We do get lots of community sporting events, or I should say, fundraising sporting events. So, you know, in Sydney there are lots of, particularly in the National Park lots of running events. We offer a 25% discount and that would continue for, you know, fundraising type events who are still, though, charging people to come onto parks. So it really depends on the type of event. In terms of you know where that fits, dylan. Most community events, though, that are small, you know, small number of people, low impact there's, yeah, other than your park use fee. There's not really an impact there.
Speaker 8:On the film permit stuff are drone applications waived for small shoots and travel media?
Speaker 5:Travel media would be and for small shoots, but you still need to apply. You basically need to apply because, as you know, drones are not, are not necessarily acceptable across all parts of national parks, so the application is really important. Yeah and.
Speaker 8:And then just to help understand, like, what's the difference between an event and your new activity category? So I'm thinking like a Scout Jamboree. Is that an event or is it an activity? And if I'm, as a commercial operator, when do I tip it from it being an activity that's different to what's in my standard licence to going actually? No, I'm now applying for an event.
Speaker 5:Where it's a one-off let's call it event. It's basically you apply for either a small-scale or a large-scale application. The activity licensing is like the Park Seeker Pass, where you've got consistent tours or consistent experiences across the year, for example. Tours or consistent experiences across the year, for example, the activity license is probably a little bit of a yeah, a confusing term, but it really is things like, as I said in the example, anything that sits outside of just a guided tour or a guided experience. So things like, you know, a transport license or a dry hire kayaking usually those sorts of things that are consistent throughout the year in certain parks. So there's certain parks where people want to operate. You do need to have something which is equated to a Park Seco Pass licence and we just we call it activity because we've got to define the licence from a legal perspective in a different way.
Speaker 8:So it's just expanding the CTO scope Correct, okay, great. And advances in that Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 5:Food vendors, for example, don't fit anywhere in our agency. We used to give them general trading licences and off they'd go. A food vendor, for example, that might be interested in operating on park would come to us now and if it's a particular park, that where they've got approval or they could do it and it's consistent throughout the year. It's an activity license and it has the same conditions, um, or the conditions that are sitting within, yeah, the park seeker pass program awesome.
Speaker 8:And then the last two little questions. Uh, first one's about groups. So, um, you talk about, uh, small group sites get 25, sorry, group sites get 25% off the camping fees. But what is a group site? And in the same question, in the same breath, if I'm a CTO or a school or a scout group or whatever else and I make a group booking, I now I think what I do now is I pay per site, do site capacities? Are they always six? And so if I'm a group booking, say 24 people, do I always book four sites, or does it sometimes is it two and sometimes it's 10? And how do I decide what a group is as a group? Commercial tour operator.
Speaker 6:Yeah, thank you. That's a very good question. What determines a group? We have better information now on each of the campgrounds of what you can book online and what needs to be submitted as a group request. The group sites are dedicated sites for groups.
Speaker 6:I'm thinking campgrounds that have a separate site that can hold more than the standard capacities can hold multiple setups, such as Ilaru group campsite. There's a separate group campground that holds about 35, 36 people and then there's some extra large sites that can hold three setups. So there are multiples of the standard site With capacity. A standard site we have defined as up to six people, including four adults, so it can be six. If they're children and that's also to cater to school groups that bring along tents but not a lot of vehicles, you can very easily fit six kids onto one site, so you then book a multiple of that. But if you are having a group of, let's say, four-wheel drives with caravans, you probably need to book a site for each setup for each caravan and car, versus having a school group that fit in a much closer footprint where you book fewer sites where you'd book fewer sites.
Speaker 8:So I'll just flag there that there's a bit of an assumption there that commercial tour groups or school groups that you can't have large groups of adults.
Speaker 8:So, for example, mile Lakes and the Shoalhaven River are areas that we operate as a commercial tour operator, where we take groups of 12 adults on an outdoor it's outdoor education for adults. 12 adults on an outdoor it's outdoor education for adults. And so when I look at Beehive Point as an example, is a campsite that's got lots of places next to it where you could have 36 adult participants feeding in there, and Mile Lakes, you could have 100 people from one commercial group booking out Johnson's campsite there, and so the idea that adults take up more space than kids because they bring their stuff, it's like, hang on, there's a little bit of a difference there, so I'll make sure I include that in my feedback, but the other uh. The last question I had, though, was that, um, you said that you surveyed your regular visitors, but I actually don't recall parks surveying PEP CTOs asking about this in the prior like. I honestly can't recall. I apologise if I did, but when did you ask the commercial tour operators?
Speaker 6:So we went to bookers that had the most visitor nights in December 2022 and January 2023. We asked them for feedback then and we went out again at the beginning of this consultation period to advise that and that included about at that time sorry, the first of 2002-2003 was 5,500 people, 5,500 unique,500 unique users, email addresses that have made bookings, because they're the users. In the most recent, as the consultation opened, we went out to 12,500 users.
Speaker 1:And we have at the moment about 2,500 responses.
Speaker 6:We didn't go all to all commercials because not all commercial operators camp. We went to anyone that in the 2022 survey. We went to anyone that had booked. So the amount of bookings that people have made.
Speaker 2:And I'd say that that wouldn't probably incorporate our guys, because we're not really out there in december and january mostly no, no, it wasn't in december, january.
Speaker 6:It's people that had booked for the previous three years. So, uh, totals per per account, per um res, expert or international parks account, the total of of nights, sorry, the total of booked nights that each of those accounts had. We went out to that group of people and that represents almost 80% of use. So it's sort of the operator rule that we went out to and those are highly engaged. We got lots of good feedback on the first round of the proposal and again this round again lots of good feedback. I encourage you to provide more. We're currently about 2,500, I think responses mainly on the survey, which is quick and easy to actually provide feedback at so many good answers.
Speaker 2:No worries, dan, did you want to talk to your question? No?
Speaker 4:yeah, thanks guys. I was just wondering what the camping fee situation will mean for schools it would be a multiple of sites rather than people.
Speaker 6:So we're moving from charging per person to charge per site. So for a, a school, if you had 60 kids, for example, you'd book 10 sites and then you'd need to determine that you can fit onto those 10 sites. If you have more setups and you're bringing along camp kitchens and extra equipment and you need more space, you just book the additional space for extra sites, or you'd book into a group site.
Speaker 4:Okay, and all those percentage fee increases that we can see? They will equally apply to schools.
Speaker 6:The fees are the same for schools but it gives you the opportunity with schools, if they are children, to feed more, allow a few more people per site. In general there is no percentage increase. This is the percentage of, and in that slide was the percentage of campgrounds that we had in the initial determination. That would roughly fit into those categories. So they're not fee increases as such, because it's a very different way of charging for the campsites. It's not really a like for like, but I have in the current averages and the CPI. That is what people are currently paying Because we've got the extra person fee. We generally have between about 2.54 to 2.85 people per site out of peak season and that goes up to about 3 to 3.2 people per site in peak season.
Speaker 2:Does that answer your query, Dan?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean I don't personally do the bookings at the school which I work at, but I just wanted to try and work out. You know what is the cost going to be for schools under the new regime if it's implemented.
Speaker 2:And I think, like Vanessa's done, I think the exercise has to be done on the various paths that you use or the campsites you use, and see what that difference is. We might be able to work together on that. Sam, I know this is an issue for you too.
Speaker 9:I think my question query clarification is similar to Dan. Am I right to say that ECOPAS holders, licence holders, will generally be charged the same fees as the general public?
Speaker 6:Is that correct? Yes, but there's two distinctions for park ECOPAS operators and schools. Park ECOPAS operators and schools can put in a group request up to 365 days, whereas public can only book 180 days. And with those groups you pay a deposit only or no deposit and then pay later, whereas public would pay at the time of booking.
Speaker 9:Okay.
Speaker 6:In light of that.
Speaker 9:I have a general frustration with the Eco Pass arrangement, and this is probably something that's been going on for a number of years. It seems we pay more and don't get anything more and, from a national parks perspective, we've gone through the hurdles of proving our eco, our risk management credentials, approving our eco, our risk management credentials, and I would have thought eco-pass campers are lighter users of National Park Centre campgrounds. So in terms of litter, cleanliness of the pit toilets, how we're using your facilities I would have thought is better than the average consumer, and yet there doesn't seem to be any benefit of being an EcoPass holder. In addition, we're paying for the tour fees as we go through, whereas an individual wouldn't have to pay that.
Speaker 6:Am I missing something? The Do you want to answer that. So camping fees and camping is subsidised by the taxpayer, similar to public transport. The actual cost of providing the service is multiple times of what we are charging taxpayers to ask for their contribution. So general public and taxpayer subsidizes camping. As a commercial enterprise you are using those subsidized rates and obtaining a commercial benefit or profit that you are seeking to make of that public land. So I'd say that you know it's fair to charge the same fee.
Speaker 5:I think the other interesting conundrum is that when we're talking to different stakeholders, you could imagine, you could only imagine when we're talking to community groups and they would probably say and we defend them to the hilt, we defend you to the hilt. They would probably say that you know. Yes, of course commercial operators. You know why should we give them any more or additional benefits? Because it's all about to Christian's point. You know it's the public site and campgrounds are for everyone. If we were to do that, I think we'd be crucified. It's not that we don't disagree with your point about the value of parks, eco parks, operators, but the minute that we give a commercial operator or event organiser or anyone leverage, we would be crucified. More broadly, in the community, it's just the way that it is.
Speaker 9:Yeah, I think I'm asking for a discount on camping fees because we're being charged to to walk through a national park whereas, um, your jogger that runs through the the high car isn't being charged. Yeah, you, you collect vehicle usage, but in terms of the actual walkthrough we're paying more already, and so I wouldn't say that we're getting a discount or leveraging it. I'm saying, at the moment I feel like we're being penalised for using it.
Speaker 5:And I guess, respectfully, we take that on as feedback. But yeah, my point before, we have a diverse range of stakeholders, yeah, and I'd be interested to hear of the EcoPass holders, the diverse range of stakeholders.
Speaker 9:How diverse is the profitability of our organisations? Because I don't see a whole lot of people getting rich out of this industry. Because I don't see a whole lot of people getting rich out of this industry. The margins are very tight and these kind of fees impact us.
Speaker 2:I understand Just for clarity on even our own submission that we'll be supporting you guys with when a fee's set. Sam, like you've got your costs set till, is it the end of June next year or is it set till December this year? I mean, when can you review your own fees?
Speaker 9:We set prices 24 months out. So we're giving our customers. We're telling them what the 26 we're giving our customers. We're telling them what the 26 fees will be 27 fees this year?
Speaker 2:Yep, great, thank you. That's helpful. Thank you, look, guys, I'm conscious of time. We're actually four minutes over, but I know this is a very important conversation and it hasn't stopped here. As the guys said, this is out on exhibition and for comments, so this is a great opportunity for us to work with National Parks on getting it right for their needs and for our needs. So, thank you, is there anyone else that just wanted to jump in quickly and ask anything, a clarification or anything at all?
Speaker 5:Could I just quickly respond to Dylan's comment. It's fair, but it's kind of but I would like to respectfully respond. That's why we're here now, dylan, particularly in relation to camping consultation. Christian's team weren't in a position to go out beforehand. We're bound, as you know, by New South Wales government protocol and ministerial requirements. The minute that public consultation occurred, you were advised in addition to what you would have received through, I guess, general consultation. But also we went out to all Park Seeker Pass operators and we're more than happy to have several conversations with all of you moving forward. That's what this timeframe and this period's about. So there were no surprises out.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, great, there were no surprises, and thank you so much for being here. Um, you know, for, on behalf of um, all of us, you know we really do thank you for the time you you're giving us in preparing for um the the submissions and making sure that we can have our say. Um, and thank you to everyone who's joined us today. Um, if you've got any more thoughts, I would encourage you to please email them through to us so we can certainly incorporate that. We've got the bare bones of what we've got in feedback already, so we'd like to work with you on any changes to that. So, thank you all for joining. As you know, we're here every Friday 10 o'clock and um. Thank you for joining.
Speaker 1:Have a great rest of the weekend and a great week ahead thank you for joining the weekly outdoor industry connect and share forum brought to you by outdoors new south wales and australian capital territory, your peak body for the outdoor industry. Together with our members, we're shaping the future of the outdoors. See you next week for more insights and collaboration.