Publicity:
| It would curl the furry toes of any hobbit and send Bilbo Baggins scurrying into Middle Earth in fright. The blood-curdling, expletive-laden screams reverberating throughout the stunning New Zealand countryside have become incessant. They’re bellowing from the petrified insides of thousands of young adventure tourists like Scott Ashcroft. Scott may be terrified of heights but when his friends decided they were going to celebrate his 25th birthday by doing New Zealand’s highest bungy jump what could he do? He jumped too. And when the bungy band bounced itself out and Scott realised he might have a shot at making his 26th birthday he was in an expansive mood. |
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| “Everybody walks away feeling really good about themselves and ready to take on other challenges. Life is a big, big challenge and if you take on some of these challenges the reward’s huge’. AJ HACKETT - NZ Bungy Trailblazer |
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| But not everyone walks away from an adventure tourism experience in New Zealand. Over the past eight years at least 50 visitors have died when things went dreadfully wrong. Many more have suffered crippling injuries. Of course many of these white-knuckle pursuits are dangerous but is New Zealand doing enough to ensure that companies and individuals selling these thrills to a wide-eyed crowd are playing by the rule-book - and is that rule-book as comprehensive as it should be? |
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| “My son’s death was entirely preventable. It was not an accident. It was an inevitable certainty that that was going to happen”. CHRIS COKER, Father of sky-diving plane crash victim Brad |
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| Chris Coker’s 24 year old son Brad came all the way from the UK to throw himself out of a plane high over the Kiwi mountainside but that plane crashed shortly after take-off killing all nine on board. The loss of his son in the infamous Fox Glacier disaster has spurred Chris Coker into an internet campaign targeting New Zealand’s unique compensation system. |
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| “I really don’t want another father in the world to get the knock on the door from the police to tell them their child’s been killed. (but) It will happen again because of the law in NZ. The fact that you can’t sue anybody for negligence or wrongful death (means) nobody is held to account.” CHRIS COKER |
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| In a forensic examination of New Zealand’s adventure tourism industry and safety regime, correspondent Dominique Schwartz exposes significant flaws in regulation and safety awareness. She investigates the activities of a prominent ballooning operator with a troubling track record and hears evidence that NZ’s taxpayer-funded accident compensation scheme may be enabling poor practice. |
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| Queenstown/Adventure activity montage | Music | 00:00 |
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| SCHWARTZ: If you like a thrill, it’s easy to fall for New Zealand. | 00:23 |
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| STEVE LATHAM: “Kiwis love to bring people over here, show them their environment and | 00:30 |
| Latham | try to scare... scare people to death while they’re here” (laughs). | 00:33 |
| Schwartz skydiving. | Music | 00:37 |
| Latham and others skiing |
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| Latham and group after ski | SCHWARTZ: Tour guide Steve Latham loves adventure. He’s made a life out of it. | 01:00 |
| Latham. Super: Latham snowboards | STEVE LATHAM: “I basically just left home when I was 17 and started hitchhiking around the country. Learnt a lot about New Zealand while I was doing that, then wanted to carry on with that and somehow make a living out of just being a New Zealander, showing people how beautiful it was”. | 01:08 |
| Bus on mountain road/Inside bus | SCHWARTZ: But New Zealand has beauty with bite. Too often in recent years, adventure has turned to deadly misadventure. | 01:23 |
| Ashcroft on bus | Queenslander, Scott Ashcroft is hoping that won’t happen today. | 01:33 |
| Latham on bus | STEVE LATHAM: “It’s a very special day today isn’t it? Why is it a very special day? Whose birthday is it? Scotty’s birthday! And one thing about Scotty is that he’s scared of heights - so as a birthday present we are going to throw him off a 134 metre bridge. What do we think of that idea?” TOURISTS: (shout) “Awesome!” | 01:38 |
| Schwartz with Ashcroft on bus | SCHWARTZ: “So you’re afraid of heights?” SCOTT ASHCROFT: “I am, yep”. SCHWARTZ: “Why are you going to jump off a bridge?” SCOTT ASHCROFT: “I have no idea. I guess it’s good just to test yourself out a bit.... challenge yourself”. | 01:59 |
| Anna puts harness on Ashcroft | SCHWARTZ: Scott has run with the bulls in Pamplona. It was a buzz, but it’s New Zealand which really gets his adrenalin pumping. This is his second trans-Tasman trip in eight months. | 02:13 |
| Anna giving instructions on bridge | ANNA: “So you’re going to be out on the edge like this, push off away from us as far as you can go, go in head first”. | 02:29 |
| Ashcroft on bridge in harness | SCOTT ASHCROFT: “Yeah at the moment I’m not feeling too bad”. SCHWARTZ: “How many times have you been to the bathroom?” SCOTT ASHCROFT: “A couple” (laughing) | 02:36 |
| Jump preparations | SCHWARTZ: Two and a half million people travel to New Zealand each year. Nearly forty per cent will try at least one adventure activity. | 02:49 |
| Latham and Ashcroft | STEVE LATHAM: “How are you feeling?” SCOTT ASHCROFT: “Not good man”. STEVE LATHAM: “Okay man just breathe it in. Relax. Chill out. Just live in the moment okay? Just have one thing in mind and that is as soon as you get to that platform, you’re jumping, you’re not going to stop. We’re jumping aren’t we? SCOTT ASHCROFT: “Yeah”. STEVE LATHAM: “Jumping?” SCOTT ASHCROFT: “Yeah”. STEVE LATHAM: “Jumping. Go on. Happy birthday”. | 03:01 |
| Ashcroft prepares for jump/ On ledge/Jumps | SCHWARTZ: New Zealand’s highest bungy jump is no cheap thrill. The 134 metre plunge costs about two hundred Australian dollars, but jumpers say the experience is priceless. STEVE LATHAM: “Okay man it’s show time”. Here we go. Three… Two… One… Go! | 03:22 |
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| AJ HACKETT: “Well I think the main thing is it opens up the doors for opportunity that people didn’t think they could actually do and, you know, | 03:47 |
| Hackett. Super: | everybody walks away feeling really good about themselves and ready to take on other challenges and, you know, life is a big challenge and if you can take on some of these challenges, the rewards are huge”. | 03:56 |
| Ashcroft after jump |
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| SCHWARTZ: Surviving his 25th birthday is something Scott Ashcroft will never forget. | 04:19 |
| Ashcroft views footage of jump | SCOTT ASHCROFT: “I don’t know, I just can’t believe I actually did it. It’s something I would never have done really so I’m pretty happy that I got through it”. | 04:25 |
| Hackett puts harness on jumper | SCHWARTZ: New Zealander AJ Hackett pioneered commercial bungy and now runs jump sites around the world.. | 04:37 |
| Archival. Vanuatu vine jumpers | He was inspired by the traditional vine jumpers of Vanuatu and a lifetime love of playing with gravity. AJ HACKETT: “When the opportunity came up to play around with rubber, I just sort of started fantasizing about things that we couldn’t do as kids and I thought | 04:45 |
| Hackett | well then there’s some real possibilities here, we can jump a lot higher, you know? It could be a lot of fun”. | 05:01 |
| Archival. Hackett jumps from Eiffel Tower | SCHWARTZ: AJ’s dive off the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 1987 brought bungy to world attention | 05:08 |
| Archival. AJ and Henry at Queenstown/Bungy tourists | and then the world to Queenstown, when he and Henry van Asch opened up their passion to paying customers. Today business is bigger than ever. | 05:16 |
| Schwartz by cable car | “This is where New Zealand’s adventure tourism industry really got started 24 years ago, at the Kawarau bridge in Queenstown. Bungy jumping is still one of the iconic activities and despite how it might appear – one of the safest”. | 05:29 |
| Hackett | AJ HACKETT: “We’ve jumped now just over two and a half million customers in 23 years and we haven’t killed anybody..... touch lots of wood”. | 05:46 |
| Queenstown adventure montage | Music | 05:56 |
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| SCHWARTZ: Queenstown is now recognised as the adventure capital of the world -- zorbing just one of the latest Kiwi inventions. Tourism is one of New Zealand’s most lucrative industries, earning 18 billion Australian dollars a year – thanks increasingly to adrenalin charged activities. But growth has come at a cost. | 06:00 |
| Fade up from black. TVNZ News reports of adventure tourism disasters | Music | 06:26 |
| Super: September 2008 | TVNZ NEWS REPORT: “It would be all too late but still they try in a desperate bid to save the life of a woman stuck under the jet boat when it overturned”. | 06:31 |
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| Music | 06:40 |
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| TVNZ NEWS REPORT: [21 September 2009] “The 21 year old was travelling with her boyfriend when they went on a Mad Dog trip on the Kawarau river. She became trapped under the water against this rock; desperate attempts to rescue her alive unsuccessful”. | 06:47 |
| Father of killed woman. Super: | CHRIS JORDAN: “The appalling, the ridiculous way she died has just been very upsetting. You know it was just so preventable at every stage”. | 06:59 |
| Photo. Jordan and daughter | Music | 07:08 |
| Hot air balloon with tourists | SCHWARTZ: At least 50 adventure tourists have died in New Zealand over the past 8 years. Adventure aviation has taken a particularly large toll. | 07:14 |
| TVNZ News report. Super: | TVNZ NEWS REPORT: “It was all that remained when a hot air balloon caught on power lines and went up in flames near Carterton. Eleven people on board were killed, including pilot Lance Hopping”. | 07:25 |
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| SCHWARTZ: This year’s Carterton balloon accident was New Zealand’s worst aviation disaster since the 1979 Mt Erebus plane crash. The cause of the tragedy is still being determined, but investigators have said the balloon was not airworthy and the pilot had cannabis in his system. | 07:35 |
| Fox Glacier news report | Music | 07:59 |
| Super: September 2010 | TVNZ NEWS REPORT: “The scene of the tragic flight. The burnt out wreckage of the small aircraft with nine people on board lies at the end of Fox Glacier’s airstrip”. | 08:05 |
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| SCHWARTZ: Only 16 months earlier, a skydiving plane crash killed 9 people, among them 24 year old Briton, Bradley Coker. | 08:14 |
| McClelland. Super: | IAN MCCLELLAND: “They did not comply with the rules and did not ensure the aircraft was being operated in accordance with the flight manual”. | 08:24 |
| Photo. Crashed plane | Music | 08:30 |
| Photo. Bradley Coker | CHRIS COKER: “My son’s death was | 08:36 |
| Coker | entirely preventable. It was not an accident. It was an inevitable certainty that that was going to happen”. | 08:39 |
| Coker at computer
| SCHWARTZ: Bradley’s father, Chris Coker, is on a mission. He’s launched an internet campaign warning adventure tourists to stay away from New Zealand. | 08:47 |
| Super: Internet campaign | Music | 08:59 |
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| SCHWARTZ: Chris Coker says there’ll be more deaths unless New Zealand overhauls its legal system to ensure adventure operators can be held to account. | 09:05 |
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| CHRIS COKER: “My main concern is I really don’t want another father in the world to get a knock on the door from the police | 09:14 |
| Coker. Super: | to tell them their child’s been killed. It will happen again, because of the law in New Zealand, the fact that you can’t sue anybody for negligence or wrongful death. You can’t do that, so nobody is held to account. It’s just not safe. It’s allowing them to run dangerous operations and they do, and this is the result”. | 09:19 |
| Hot air balloon takes off | Music | 09:44 |
| Martyn and tourists in balloon | SCHWARTZ: Martyn Stacey has also been campaigning for tighter controls on adventure tour operators. | 09:53 |
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| Music | 09:59 |
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| SCHWARTZ: Ballooning may appear to be the gentlest of extreme sports but this is a four tonne aircraft with more power than many a light plane and no brakes. A pilot can take the craft up or down but direction is determined by the wind. | 10:10 |
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| Music | 10:29 |
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| MARTYN STACEY: “It’s a magical experience flying balloons | 10:32 |
| Martyn. Super: | and at different altitudes you get different wind directions and that’s how you can control your balloon”. | 10:34 |
| Martyn and tourists in balloon | SCHWARTZ: Reading the weather correctly and erring on the side of caution is critical. | 10:39 |
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| MARTYN STACEY: “I have one rule in ballooning – my rule is I’d rather be on the ground wishing I’m in the air than in the air wishing I’m on the ground”. SCHWARTZ: “So back in March | 10:44 |
| Schwartz with others in balloon | there was a balloon that went into the top of trees. Is that something which happens to everybody at some stage because of freak gusts?” MARTYN STACEY: “I suspect if every balloonist is honest, they will hit trees at some stage and it’s a learning curve. | 10:55 |
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| Now that was a commercial flight. Conditions most probably outside what they should have been in”. SCHWARTZ: “Did you fly that day?” MARTYN STACEY: “No, we cancelled our flight that day”. | 11:07 |
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| SCHWARTZ: “Did other balloon companies fly?” MARTYN STACEY: “Yeah there was about four or five or us all said no to flying”. | 11:14 |
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| SCHWARTZ: The company that did fly on March the 24th and clipped trees coming in to land was Balloon Adventures, Up Up and Away Ltd. It’s being investigated by the Civil Aviation Authority – and not for the first time. | 11:21 |
| Ragg | DEAN RAGG: “I’m not surprised”. SCHWARTZ: “The company says it was a minor incident, there was no damage done”. DEAN RAGG: “No, but the potential was hugely there for a major incident”. | 11:38 |
| Bad weather shot |
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| Ragg maintaining balloon | SCHWARTZ: Dean Ragg is a former chief pilot of Balloon Adventures Up Up and Away. When he left the company in March 2010, he took his safety concerns to the Civil Aviation Authority. Four months later the CAA grounded the company’s seven balloons for seven weeks. It said the operation presented a threat to people’s safety. DEAN RAGG: [Balloon pilot] “I started looking into rules, regulations, maintenance and all that sort of stuff | 11:52 |
| Ragg. Super: | and I found a few things that needed being tidying up. Then I went through the process of tidying those particular spots up with a little difficulty”. | 12:20 |
| Night. Inflating balloon | Music | 12:30 |
| Footage from Up Up and Away website | SCHWARTZ: One of the two directors of Balloon Adventures Up Up and Away is pilot Chris Johnson. As a young army officer he was court martialled for theft. In 2004 he was convicted under the Civil Aviation Act after providing air investigators with what the judge called a bogus document. DEAN RAGG: “I’ve known him since I was eighteen. A long time”. SCHWARTZ: “He taught you to fly”. | 12:36 |
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| DEAN RAGG: “He taught me to fly aeroplanes, yep originally, yep”. | 12:28 |
| Ragg | SCHWARTZ: “So what kind of a person is he?” DEAN RAGG: “A very interesting one. Very intelligent, very clever, very charismatic. He could sell ice cubes to Eskimos – that sort of person. | 13:01 |
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| Yeah he was a very good friend up until I started working for him and then our friendship fell apart”. SCHWARTZ: “Why was that?” DEAN RAGG: “Just through these problems I was having as chief pilot”. | 13:13 |
| Foggy landscape | Music | 13:24 |
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| SCHWARTZ: Dean Ragg says Chris Johnson wanted to put four balloons in the air on a day of thick fog. DEAN RAGG: “We got out to the launch site, it was foggy. So you couldn’t even see to the other end of the launch site. He said, | 13:29 |
| Ragg | “Oh it doesn’t matter, we’ll be fine.” I’m like “No, look this isn’t legal. We’re outside the legal parameters of flying”. In which case he said “well we’ll wait and see what happens”. So we did, we waited for about half an hour and the conditions got worse and then I said well that’s it. The flight’s over. We’re going home”. | 13:41 |
| Photo. Cloud enshrouded mountains | SCHWARTZ: Not flying, potentially cost the company thousands of dollars in lost fares. DEAN RAGG: “My experience has told me | 13:59 |
| Ragg | they’re very money orientated. The profit comes first”. | 14:08 |
| B balloon shots | SCHWARTZ: Chris Johnson is also a part owner and operator of Balloon Adventures Emirates. In April 2010 one of the company’s balloons made a fast and heavy landing. Two passengers were killed, a crew member was paralysed and later died. The company was cleared of any wrongdoing and a conviction against the pilot was later quashed, but the aviation regulator found that the balloon had been launched in marginal weather after an earlier take off was aborted due to high winds. | 14:13 |
| Kollar | PETER KOLLAR: “Adventure tourism is the fastest growing sector within tourism”. SCHWARTZ: Chris Johnson’s partner in the Emirates’ business is Peter Kollar. He’s also a former director of Balloon Adventures Up Up and Away. | 14:47 |
| News file – balloon at sea and rescue helicopters | In 1995, Peter Kollar was flying for Up Up and Away when his balloon came down at sea off Christchurch. Three tourists drowned. | 14:59 |
| Kenny | “Is it a company that has been of concern to the Civil Aviation Authority?” REX KENNY: “Any company that has a conviction is of concern”. | 15:15 |
| Hangar doors opening/Plane in hangar | SCHWARTZ: Rex Kenny believes there’s no longer anywhere to hide for unsafe operators. He oversees adventure aviation for New Zealand’s Civil Aviation Authority – the CAA”. “So Rex | 15:30 |
| Kenny shows Schwartz plane | what do you call this?” REX KENNY: “This is called a Sonex”. SCHWARTZ: “And you built it?” REX KENNY: “I did. In my garage”. SCHWARTZ: Under changes which took effect in May, | 15:43 |
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| all adventure aviation businesses must now be certified by the CAA. Previously, the authority could act only against pilots and aircraft. | 15:52 |
| Kenny. Super: | REX KENNY: “So the new adventure aviation regulations allow us to actually suspend the operating certificate and therefore put the company the on ground if necessary in the worst cases. The introduction of 115 puts us almost on a different planet in regard to what happened previously and what’s in the future”. | 16:04 |
| Schwartz in balloon with Martyn Stacey | SCHWARTZ: Martyn Stacey supports the new regulation known as 115. His company was among the first to be audited and certified. | 16:24 |
| Photos. Balloon Adventures Up Up and Away | Balloon Adventures Up Up and Away is still going through the process. Its key people must pass a fit and proper person test and the company must convince the CAA it has the systems and attitude to provide a safe adventure experience. REX KENNY: “The aviation attitude is knowing that you get one chance. | 16:38 |
| Kenny | Once you’re in the air, you don’t have a second chance. You have to resolve the problems that you might encounter. But what you can’t have is a culture problem, because that won’t allow you to solve the problem that you need to resolve and it will end up in disaster”. | 17:00 |
| Schwartz in balloon with Martyn Stacey | SCHWARTZ: “The new regulations.... will they get rid of any cowboys in the industry?” MARTYN STACEY: “Well hopefully, hopefully we haven’t had cowboys in the industry but we’ve had people who’ve sort of pushed the law to its limits”. | 17:19 |
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| SCHWARTZ: Balloon Adventures Up Up and Away has not been flying since just before the new requirement came into effect in May. But it says its grounding is due to a drop off in tourist numbers since the Christchurch quakes, not any rule change. | 17:33 |
| Photo. Chris Johnson | Director Chris Johnson declined an interview on camera, but spoke with me from Dubai. | 17:54 |
| Schwartz to camera | Chris Johnson says he’s confident that Balloon Adventures Up Up and Away will live up to its name and will soon have its balloons back up over the skies here in Christchurch. He says he’s never pressured any of his pilots to fly when they didn’t want to and that safety is paramount. He also told me he welcomes the tighter regulations. | 18:01 |
| Kenny | SCHWARTZ: “So if you have somebody who is a director of a company who has been convicted under the Civil Aviation Act, is that person then deemed to be not a fit and proper person?” REX KENNY: “Not necessarily. | 18:22 |
| Kenny. Super: | We’d be looking to see that there was a compliance history that showed that if there was a mistake made, that over time that wasn’t repeated”. SCHWARTZ: “Is Chris Johnson a fit and proper person to be running a balloon operation?” | 18:37 |
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| REX KENNY: “Well that’s what the whole process of the assessment is about. And as I say, that’s still being done”. | 18:50 |
| Adventure tourism activities | SCHWARTZ: The New Zealand Government insists its adventure tourism industry is safe. There’s no argument from Scott Ashcroft and his thrill seeking tour mates. Done with bungy they’re now onto jet boating and zip lining. | 18:56 |
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| “Have you ever have any fears about safety doing any of these adventure activities”. | 19:18 |
| Keown. Super: | JAMES KEOWN: “No not at all, not they’re all well organised, run by people who obviously know what they’re doing so..... I guess at some point you’ve got to just leave it to them and trust them”. | 19:22 |
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| SCHWARTZ: But the government admits industry self-regulation has been far from perfect, so it’s tightening controls across all adventure activities. CHRIS COKER: [Victim’s father] “They change the rules and bring out new regulations as if to say they’ve fixed the problem. | 19:33 |
| Coker. Super: | The problem is not fixed. The problem was never a shortage of rules and regulations, the problem is no enforcements. Nobody is scared, there’s nobody held to account”. | 19:52 |
| Adventure activities | SCHWARTZ: Chris Coker believes the only way to truly hold adventure companies to account is to allow accident victims and their families to sue for damages - something which is almost impossible under the country’s accident compensation regime. | 20:05 |
| Queenstown hospital extraordinary. Pan to Schwartz to camera | If you’re a foreigner holidaying in Queenstown and you have an accident, it’s more than likely you’ll wind up here, at the local hospital or there are any number of doctors, physiotherapists and other health professionals about town. But no matter who you see, or what treatment you receive, it’ll be paid for by the New Zealand taxpayer. That’s because under the country’s unique accident compensation scheme, anyone who’s injured in New Zealand be it resident or visitor is covered. The trade-off is that you can’t sue for damages. | 20:22 |
| Schwartz and Watson walk | Professor Susan Watson says the system, when introduced in 1974 was revolutionary, taking the lawyers and the lottery out of accident compensation. PROFESSOR SUSAN WATSON: “If you got hit by a rich person you might get a million dollars compensation, if you got | 20:55 |
| Watson. Super: | knocked down by a car driven by someone with no assets then you wouldn’t get any compensation at all. So there was sort of a desire to have a system which New Zealanders perceived to be fairer where everyone would get compensation regardless of fault and regardless of who caused the injury”. | 21:11 |
| Adventure activities | Music | 21:27 |
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| SCHWARTZ: The universal scheme covers people for accidents at home, work and play – yet ironically it may make accidents more likely. | 21:32 |
| Auckland University | Research conducted by Auckland University’s commercial law department suggests that without the threat of being sued, an organisation can get complacent with disastrous results. | 21:46 |
| Watson | PROFESSOR SUSAN WATSON: “New Zealand has four times the rate of workplace fatalities than the UK and twice the rate of workplace fatalities than Australia”. SCHWARTZ: “And what do you put that down to?” PROFESSOR SUSAN WATSON: “Well all I can say | 22:01 |
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| is that it doesn’t disprove our idea that because corporations lack conscience, without the ability to sue the corporation for accidents, there isn’t an incentive, there isn’t sufficient incentive for them to put health and safety regimes or appropriate health and safety regimes in place”. | 22:12 |
| File footage. Pike River mine disaster/Christchurch earthquake | Music | 22:31 |
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| SCHWARTZ: The deadly Pike River mine disaster in 2010 and the catastrophic building collapses in the Christchurch earthquakes have shone a spotlight on New Zealand’s workplace safety – or lack of it. The government has ordered an independent review. Professor Watson says thought should be given to introducing a charge of corporate manslaughter as part of a raft of changes. PROFESSOR SUSAN WATSON: “What New Zealand perhaps could consider bringing back the right to sue for health and safety breaches | 22:38 |
| Watson | in workplaces. Another option is to beef up the level of fines for health and safety breaches in workplaces. In Australia, the maximum fine for a corporation breaching health and safety is two million dollars - in New Zealand it’s five hundred thousand dollars”. | 23:15 |
| Bungy jumpers/Schwartz with Hackett | SCHWARTZ: Bungy entrepreneur AJ Hackett believes people should have the right to sue for gross negligence. But he says litigation can go too far, like the time a woman tried to sue his Las Vegas operation when she got wet hair on a jump. AJ HACKETT: “Every day working in America | 23:32 |
| Hackett. Super: | we had the threat of our business being closed down through completely ridiculous litigation, and it was a major, major issue and in New Zealand we can concentrate on actually providing a very safe environment and a fun time for our customers. For me I like the idea of if you want to do something, you take responsibility for your own actions. It’s got to give a country and a society and individuals, heaps more confidence and a lot more out of the box thinking for overcoming problems and creating good solutions”. | 23:53. |
| Snow skiing | Music | 24:38 |
| Go-karting | SCHWARTZ: Across New Zealand’s adventure tourism industry there’s little enthusiasm for ditching the country’s no fault accident liability system. REX KENNY: “You only have to look at the US where people can get the pants | 24:47 |
| Kenny | sued off them and yet they still have accidents”. | 24:56 |
| Adventure activities | Music | 25:04 |
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| STEVE LATHAM: “I reckon that we’ve got a culture that we’re going to take it to a professional level | 25:11 |
| Latham. Super: | without over regulating it and trying to sue each other and all that carry on. We’ll always keep it a little bit edgy and that’s what people come over here for. If you’re sort of worried about getting your knees dirty then maybe you should go to a different place”. | 25:15 |
| Schwartz and Hackett prepare for jump | AJ HACKETT: “We’re just going to be like this. Put your hands out elegantly like we’re you know diving and then look at the horizon out there and it’ll just be five, four, three, two, one and we’re just going to lean forward and just pop out together”. SCHWARTZ: New Zealand’s unique approach to accident liability has helped the country develop an adrenalin industry with global reach. | 25:37 |
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| New Zealand is not scared of going its own way, whether in being the first to give women the vote or in standing up to the US over nuclear policy. | 26:03 |
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| “I’m just worried about whether or not I’ll be able to go off the edge but actually I suppose you’re going to sort that out for me, aren’t you?” | 26:13 |
| Schwartz and Hackett jump | But in selling adventure, perception is everything. People want a safe scare. | 26:18 |
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| Music | 26:25 |
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| SCHWARTZ: The challenge for New Zealand is in tightening the safety net without taking the adventure out of adventure tourism. | 26:30 |
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| Music | 26:38 |
| Credits: | Reporter: Dominique Schwartz Camera: Brett Ramsay Melbourne camera: Ron Ekkel London camera: Daniel Soekov London producer: Emily Smith Editor: Garth Thomas Producer: Vivien Altman Research: Bronwen Reed Additional footage: thanks to TVNZ
| 26:48 |