Structural issues and under-resourcing at the heart of DOC’s backlog problems

To address DOC’s problems of backlog and delay, we don’t necessarily need legislation reform.

The Department of Conservation (DOC) is in the process of making targeted amendments to several pieces of conservation legislation, particularly the Conservation Act 1987, the National Parks Act 1980, and the Reserves Act 1977. According to DOC, “Addressing these issues will make the current legislative framework more workable, help concessions management systems to keep pace with societal and technological changes, and improve the often slow and painful process of reviewing out-of-date conservation management planning documents.”

In ELI’s view, however, these reforms misdiagnose problems, and overlook the key issues hampering the Department from effectively fulfilling its function.

At its core, DOC management planning is suffering from massive set of under-resourcing and structural problems that are responsible for many of the issues that this proposed reform is aiming to address. DOC concessions processing suffers similarly, and also harbor an inappropriate attitude towards the place of private - generally commercial - interests on public conservation land. Read our full submission at the link below.