On Monday, Wānaka Stakeholders Group sent a submission to Egis, the consultants running the Wānaka Airport Future Review, stage 1 “early engagement” phase. Here is our submission in full.

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[On WSG letterhead]

Submission to: Queenstown Lakes District Council 
From: Wānaka Stakeholders Group Inc.
Re: Let’s Talk: “Wānaka Airport Future Review”
Date: Monday 14 July 2025
Emailed to: Direct to Egis, as consultants for the engagement process
Cc: Mayor, Councillors, Chair of WUCCB

Kia ora Let’s Talk team

RE: Wānaka Airport Future Review

This document is our submission to the “Wānaka Airport Future Review” currently running on Let’s Talk. We verified with your lead consultant at Egis that this mode of submission was acceptable.

Importantly: on behalf of our members
This submission is on behalf of all of our members. 

One of our committee specifically asked Geoff Anderson of Egis if submissions from groups would be counted as one submission, or the number of people whose views/perspectives they speak for. His answer was that provided the organisation could establish that it was clear on member’s views, the views of the membership would be given appropriate weighting when developing scenarios.

After clarifying this, and ahead of writing to you, we have surveyed our membership. We did this specifically to triple check that what we have presented represents the views of our members. 

We say “triple check” because in developing our input on the future of Wānaka Airport we have already involved many members, plus the Wānaka Airport Users Group, residents associations and Wao Wānaka. We were already confident that we represented the views of most of our members.

The response to our survey to members was swift, strong and unequivocal, as you will see below. 

We had over 500 full responses within five days – 533 as at the time of writing this letter, to be exact. Since about response 100, the percentage points (in answer to specific questions) have moved very little. Given this, and given the number of returns, and our past interactions with members we are confident that what we are submitting to you today represents the vast majority of our members’ views, and on the most restricted reading of the statistics, the views of over 530 of our members. We assume that you will adopt the former view, not the latter (in much the same way that QLDC does when conducting surveys of residents).

For the avoidance of doubt, Wānaka Stakeholders Group Inc. has 3,172 members as at today. The vast majority live in the Upper Clutha. Our survey therefore had responses from 16.8% of our membership.

Who are our members?
We are conscious that the Egis team is new to the Upper Clutha and the issues surrounding Wānaka Airport. We also guess that you will have been briefed by elected officials and/or senior council managers about Wānaka Stakeholders Group. Given what we have previously seen and heard of such briefings, including as revealed during the Judicial Review process, we think it’s important that we inform you directly about our membership. 

We welcome further discussion about our membership, our processes and our mandate if any of the following needs clarity.

We will not repeat the detail here, as you will find detailed background about our group as it has always been, on our “about us” page on our website. We are not a group of angry, anti-development, wealthy, retired individuals (as has been claimed by some). Quite the opposite. 

Please read that page and ask us any questions you may have. Our position has remained unchanged since 2017.

Last week’s survey also re-confirmed that our membership also represents a very significant slice of the Wānaka business community. Given the numbers, it is our view that we are not only the largest single-interest community group ever formed in the Upper Clutha, but probably include the largest group of business owners/managers as well. 

Specifically, 32.5% of our members “own, operate or manage a business” as at today, with 16.3% of our members in such a business “that benefits from tourism”.  Based on our membership numbers that’s over 1,100 people in our membership who own, operate or manage a business.

Our membership comes from right throughout the community, with a small proportion from further afield. Our confirmed membership as at today is 3,172 people. Members can remove themselves from our group at any time (for example when we send an update to them), and in the years since the High Court ruling a few have.

Our submission
Our submission to you is that we have a mandate to speak on behalf of a very large group of Upper Clutha residents, as outlined above. And that we have a very clear understanding of what our members want, as outlined in the rest of this document, and the documents we refer to.

On 20 May 2025, we introduced our document “A community vision for Wānaka Airport”. The next day, we sent it to our members and the wider community. The vision is for Wānaka Airport 10-20 years from today. In that regard, it is an airport scenario that we have developed. 

But this was not just a vision of a handful of core people at Wānaka Stakeholders Group. It was members of Wānaka Stakeholders Group, reflecting the views of most of our members, and only after ongoing dialogue within the community: community groups, residents associations, airport users and more. And the final vision, before publication, was reviewed again by those same groups.

You can read the vision, and download the full document which was circulated, on our website here. In case “looking at the website” falls outside of the scope of this process, we have attached both our “about us” page and the “community vision” material as appendices to this document, in text only format.

When we surveyed our membership only 7.3% disagreed with the vision document. The rest were neutral (4.7%), or in agreement (88%). We can therefore confidently say that the vast majority of our membership support this vision and the scenario that we have developed. That’s 469 people of those who answered the survey, translating to 2,791 people from our membership.

Further, we can definitely tell you the following:

• 89.5% are against the development of Wānaka Airport for jets
• 93.1% want general aviation and associated businesses to thrive at the airport
• 95.9% agree that it does not make sense to duplicate Queenstown Airport at Wānaka Airport.
• 86.9% support Warbirds over Wānaka at the airport
• 90.6% say that our community airport should be governed by a local (Upper Clutha) elected board 
• 90.6% say that Wānaka Airport should be completely independent of Queenstown Airport and Queenstown Airport Corporation (QAC)
• 91.6% are concerned about QAC’s conflict of interest owning all the land around Wānaka Airport
• 93.6% are concerned about overtourism and 89.1% about sustainability
• 82.6% say developing Wānaka Airport should not be an infrastructure priority right now
• 95.1% say QLDC should provide full transparency around Wānaka Airport finances
• And 91.7% are happy to continue to travel for Queenstown Airport for jet services

Our recommendation
Our recommendation is simple, and will be no surprise to you.

Please take all of the above into consideration in developing the scenarios for the future of Wānaka Airport. We strongly urge you to ensure that at least one and possibly more than one of your scenarios is fully compatible with what our membership has asked for above.

We are, as ever, available to meet, discuss and talk.

We look forward to your reply.

Ngā mihi

Wānaka Stakeholders Group Incorporated*

[Signed]
Per Meg Taylor, Chair

* Our confirmed membership at last audit on 14 July 2025 is 3,172 people

CC list (via email):
Simon Telfer – WUCCB and WALC
All QLDC Councillors

[We also included attachments with the text from our About Us page and our Community Airport Vision page.]