For those Pakeha who think it is relevant only to Maori, we need to remember that it is the Treaty that gives us our place here.

Unity in diversity is healthy. It is also productive and creative. The Treaty of Waitangi, with all its flaws is our Treaty too. I, for one, enjoy exploring and learning about our history, especially as the version I was taught was neither accurate nor helpful in increasing my general understanding. The reality was much meatier and more challenging and interesting.

A visit to Waitangi, especially on Waitangi Day is one we should all make at least once in a lifetime. I treasure the visits I have made, both on Waitangi Day and on several other occasions.

On Waitangi Day I believe we should celebrate the things we have gained together, and acknowledge and explore the things we have still to do. We should treasure our uniqueness as a nation of Maori, Pakeha and everyone else who has chosen to make Aotearoa New Zealand their home.

I also think Waitangi Day should be ‘Mondayised,’ to use that ugly word. It is after all our National Day and should be accorded due respect.

It is rather ironic that Waitangi Day seems to be celebrated more wholeheartedly by our compatriots abroad than at home.

I can’t resist adding that it is shame the Waitangi Trust web site has fallen prey to the “greying of the Internet.” Perhaps trustees should remember that Waitangi Day is for all of us, and all includes disabled and older people of all ethnicities who may struggle to read grey text on an important site. After all Ink on the internet is free.

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But I was particularly interested in the claim by Bill Forrester that the issue is not so much accessible infrastructure as the way accessible tourism is not valued by both operators and promoters alike. He talked about going beyond grudgingly ‘accommodating’ disabled people to welcoming them and including them as business as usual in very real and tangible ways, to the point where statistics about their numbers were not collected.

This has set me thinking about the application of this perspective on access to our tourism industry and other areas of daily life, and I don’t just mean the built environment. This attitude persists despite some compelling figures. Twenty percent of the New Zealand population live with disability. By 2031 people over 65 will be 26% of the population with an accompanying increase in the disability rate. This is a significant market by anyone’s reckoning, even allowing for some overlap.  In countries which are our main source of tourists the rapidly ageing population is even more marked.

Dr Sandra Rhodda, access tourism researcher says of the revenue value of the access tourism market, “In Canada, for example, pwds account for $25 billion in consumer spending and in Australia the accessible tourism market is believed to be worth around $4.8bn to the Australian economy.”

Is this blinkered attitude because the non-disabled youth market is cooler, sexier and more glamorous for the advertising industry, the marketers and the PR people, who seem to me to be mostly under 40, or is it simply that older and disabled people have been invisible for so long that it is hard to take us seriously, even when we have the dosh. Perhaps it is simply a failure of the imagination.

The only products marketed to people over fifty seem to be rest homes, erectile dysfunction medication, mobility scooters, anti-ageing creams and laxative drinks. Well whoop de do!

Perhaps the providers and marketers of tourism will wake up just in time to watch the tourist dollars disappearing over the horizon to more welcoming destinations.

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New Zealand tourism has to do more than grudgingly meet minimum standards, or international visitors will not return, and they will tell others of their bad experiences.

Where is customer service?

I don’t often write about physical access as it is not my area of expertise. But a friend of mine recently had some difficulty with public transport after completing the Rail Trail. The reasons that were offered for the refusals to take her powered wheelchair on public transport reminded me of how much disabled people are still seen as a problem to be avoided rather than valued customers to be served like anyone else. The so-called number-eight wire mentality and the innovative ‘can do’ attitude beloved of kiwis was sadly lacking in this instance. Not to mention simply providing good old-fashioned quality service to a fare-paying customer.

Accessible tourism is becoming increasingly ‘business as usual’ abroad and we are being left behind. The Rail Trail is promoted as an iconic twenty-first century southern experience, but this won’t wash internationally if the infrastructure to support it is still in the dark ages.

Accessible tourism should be the norm

I decided to have a look around the Interweb to see what I could find about accessible tourism in New Zealand. I found a few specialist tour operators whose websites vary in the quality of their accessibility. I would rather see general tourism services applying accessibility principles, but good luck to those providers for offering an accessible service where it would otherwise be lacking.

There is also a good New Zealand-based Accessible Tourism blog which keeps a watch on the accessible tourism scene in NZ and keeps up to date with international developments. It recently reviewed a report Domestic Tourism Market Segmentation prepared for the Ministry of Tourism which recognises baby boomers as a market segment, But the report identifies disability as a barrier to travel and the blog says

“the report reinforces the idea that it is a person’s disability that is a barrier, rather than  environments such as inaccessible transport and accommodation that are disabling.”

Tourism Ministry out of touch

Oh dear. The Ministry should know of the New Zealand Disability Strategy and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD,) which NZ has ratified. Both of these take a different view of barriers.  The approach taken by the report explains a great deal

I checked for information on “accessible tourism” on the very modern New Zealand.com – where you would expect to find it. I found none. I then tried the Ministry of Tourism site which gave me seven search results of which the first six were totally irrelevant and the seventh took me to an uninformative page with a link to “travel information for those with special needs” which is actually on NewZealand.com listed under “key facts”.  This  left me utterly confused.

Why was it so hard to find? Because  “Travel information for those with special needs” s not what most disabled people would look for.

This outdated page is indicative of the attitude. It reads as if disabled people are inconvenient parcels that have to be conveyed from one place to another and put up with, not welcomed, or even accommodated, (sorry about the pun.)

No one in my wide NZ and international (travelling) networks is likely to feel that the term “special needs” is acceptable when the generally recognised term is accessible tourism. Other travellers might have ‘wants’ or even ‘desires.’ Someone else has arbitrarily decided that disabled people have ‘special needs’ (for ‘special’ read second class).

The tone of the page is grudging. It does not reflect an understanding of the audience. With inspiring headings such as

• Disabled Facilities
• Accommodation for the disabled
• Transport for the Disabled, and
• Food Allergies

it is hardly an enticing read.

The tourism market is growing and the potential customer base is ageing, and with that come higher rates of disability. In tough times we need to see the market as it is and behave accordingly.

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Towards the end of September I spent time with my mother, returning to my rural roots in Canterbury. I took the guided tour around my brother’s new state-of-the-art dairy operation on land that would be as dry as a bone were it not for irrigation. It seemed so strange that I had to pinch myself to make sure this was really true and not a cold-induced hallucination. I wondered what our father would think. Growing up in a traditional Canterbury sheep and cropping farming family we had always scorned “cow cockies” But although Dad was deeply conservative when it came to the behaviour and dress standards of teenage daughters he was never closed-minded about new farming developments. I suspect he would approve.

On Sunday Mum and I went to church. But instead of attending the beautiful neo-gothic St Johns we drove to Lake Coleridge under the lee of Mt Hutt, (Maunga Whare) on a lowering gray day with snow on the tops. The service was a homely spring festival, belied by the temperatures which were distinctly mid winter. A small group of people in a semi-circle around a comfortably crackling fragrant wood fire in the little community hall sang hymns and said prayers which had been refreshingly rewritten for the rural congregation. So instead of “We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land” we sang, “We plough the fields with tractors, with drills we sow the land.” It was a delightfully informal service, with one reader being moved to pause and mutter darkly “we could do without them,” to a reference to possums.

The warmth of the service continued in a hospitable high country home nearby where I found myself discussing the inappropriateness of young disabled people living in rest homes and the finer points of web design over a substantial morning tea in an environment where the views from the windows were equaled by the artwork on the walls and a pleasing modern interior of a house that blended satisfyingly into the landscape.

From Canterbury it was a flying visit home to fling the merino out of my bag and substitute some light weight cotton and head off to Brisbane to join other family members for a short holiday. It was below ten degrees in rural Canterbury and hitting thirty in Brisbane! There was relaxing, shopping, swims in the apartment pool, some river trips and of course good eating and drinking, and catching up with a friend.

And then back to the coal face, with two days of workshops and meeting, and a good old freezing Wellington southerly. Just as well I am a tough southern woman!

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I am happy to see her spread her wings and to pursue that right of passage for young Kiwis, I don’t know what it will be like to have both our daughters offshore and I dread it. Thank heavens for email, Facebook and skype. When I did my OE it was a aerogramme once a week and an occasional postcard if you were lucky. And you NEVER phoned home unless it was a life or death situation or you had completely run out of money which amounted to the same thing. But it will be hard not being able to hang out with and hug one of them at least.

Because I am thinking about them a lot more even than usual at present I have been reflecting on parenting, and for me that means reflecting on being a disabled parent. How fortunate I have been to have my girls. Unlike many disabled mothers I have had a supportive husband and family, and lovely plunket nurses. No-one ever questioned my right to be a mother, and I have never been in a position so precarious that the powers that be thought it necessary to take my children away from me simply because of my impairment and/or because I could not pay for the support I needed.

All of these things happen to disabled women everywhere. Sadly New Zealand has little support for disabled mothers beyond the services available for all women. They are not always the most supportive for disabled parents.

But our girls have been my best and most loyal supporters, even when they were little. They have never been ashamed of my impairment in front of their friends, (apart from the usual teenage stage of not wanting to be seen with their parents,) They have always accepted without question or negative comment my disabled friends, and even in the worst of teenage tantrums never showed resentment about the things I haven’t been able to do with or for them as they have grown up.

When they were little the dreaded “h” word “handicapped” was the equivalent of the dreaded “f” word, not to be uttered under any circumstances. They have even been known to rebuke their teachers for using it.

I have tried not to burden them with extra cares because of my impairment and was furious when a woman bus driver, after seeing my ‘blind’ bus pass said to one of them “now you look after your Mummy” She was only six! I wanted to say “I am the mother she is the child. I look after her!” but decided she wouldn’t get it.

So, my dear godwits fly away. Enjoy your freedom. Have fun and learn about the world but come back home before too long.

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Enjoying my family and holidaying with them have been responsible for the lack of posts over the last few weeks. We travelled around the North and South Islands mostly by car which was very cool for someone who doesn’t drive.

We stayed at motels ancient and modern and visited places as diverse as the Bay of Islands where the weather was warm and the sun shone, and Lake Wanaka where it rained, and many places in between.

We introduced our English rellies to tuataras and the summer pleasures of birds and bush at the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary and the culinary delight of Bluff oysters. Yum! Visitors are always a good excuse to sample great kiwi kai and wine! I will really have to start swimming again!

We tried the paddle steamer on the Wanganui or is it Whanganui river. The Waimarie is pleasantly slow and rather smutty – I mean coal smuts not the other kind. It was interesting to learn something about the history of the river, but I suspect it was sanitised.

Visiting the Govett Brewster gallery in New Plymouth was noisy and rather challenging with some very modern art – not quite sure about the continuous rounding up of the same mob of sheep, but I really like Len Lye’s work and look forward to visiting the planned Len Lye Centre one day. (The web site is hideous I have to say though.)

At the kiwi house at Otorohanga and I got closer to a large speckled kiwi than I have ever been to any kiwi! Another horrible web site.

We dove straight through Auckland (for once) and headed north to the Bay of Islands, stopping to see the huge graceful swamp Kauri carvings just outside Wellsford. The best bit for me though, was the Treaty Grounds at Waitangi. I understand that 80% of visitors are from overseas, yet there is so much of our own history there that I was very surprised by that figure. It is really worth a visit, and should be a ‘must do’ for all kiwis.

After all that, I took a flight to Christchurch with a change to some southern scenery. Omarama was our destination, with a call at Geraldine and Lake Tekapo on the way. The McKenzie County is just as breathtaking as I remember it, even with very little snow on the tops. Trees were beginning to turn; we ate salmon from the local salmon farm, watched our host and hostess water ski from their boat in late afternoon sunshine and spent an evening soaking steamily under the stars in a hot tub with scented wood smoke drifting lazily from the heating chimney. (They said they have an accessible tub and they are keen to attract older and disabled customers so check it out southerners.)

All good things must come to an end. Our UK rellies have gone home and our globe trotting daughter has set off on the next instalment of her OE, while the other one is immersed in work to save up for hers. Sadly I have no excuse now not to be working.

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