Joe Bennett: Should we ban all international flights to New Zealand?

Old and new. In the 17th century the shoguns were afraid Japan would be overrun, corrupted, exploited. So they put up the shutters. We should do the same here, says Joe Bennett. Photo / Getty Images

A DOG'S LIFE

Woo hoo and here's an idea for Christmas. Let's do a Japan. Not, of course, a modern Japan with its fanatical devotion to the corporate structure, but a 17th-century Japan.

Back then the Western powers were roaming the Pacific in search of colonies, conquests and trade. As usual they were softening places up with the Bible. The shoguns were afraid that Japan would be overrun, corrupted, exploited. So they put up the shutters. They closed the country. No one was to come in or out.

Then as now the Japanese didn't mess about. "No Japanese ship and no native of Japan," ran the edict of 1636, "shall presume to go out of the country; who ever acts contrary to this shall die." Elsewhere in the edict the shoguns offered a reward of 500 sheets of silver for anyone who captured a Christian missionary.

The isolation was known as shakoku and it lasted for 220 years during which time Japan became all the things that Japan is known for today. And I think we need something similar here.

Tourists come to NZ for the remoteness, the wilderness, a taste of the primal and unruined. But by coming in such numbers they erode the very thing they came for. Photo / File

Now I acknowledge that in these soft and tolerant times it might be pushing it to put a bounty on vicars - though ooh how my fingers itch - and the death penalty for going on holiday might prove unpopular too, but the principle is the thing. So I propose, modestly but confidently, that here in New Zealand we ban all international flights.

Whoa, I know, I know, but hear me out. Every revolutionary idea seems outlandish at first.

At any moment there is a tourist city the size of Dunedin moving round NZ and alighting on the pretty bits rendering them less pretty. The goose that lays the golden eggs is being throttled.

Planes are pollutant. They spew greenhouse gases. They also increase levels of cirrus cloud that trap heat. It is only a matter of time before global opinion turns entirely against them. We need to get out ahead of that change of mind. We need to lead the way.

At present tourists come to this country by plane. They come for the remoteness, the wilderness, a taste of the primal and unruined. But by coming in such numbers they erode the very thing they came for.

Are we losing what we have that is special to the rest of the world by opening the floodgates to tourism? Photo / File

When you have to book to walk a mountain track, when you are ferried past glow-worms on a string of loaded rafts, when you park your campervan beside a thousand others, you have not found what you came for. You have found only what you fled, a boiling over-populated world.

At any summer moment there is a tourist city the size of Dunedin moving round this country and alighting on the pretty bits and rendering them less pretty. The goose that lays the golden eggs is being throttled as we speak.

When New Zealanders have have to book and wait many months to walk a mountain track things have got really bad. Photo / File

Of course if we banned planes, and dammed the stream of cut-rate tourists, there'd be an immediate loss of revenue. But at the same time we'd become the thing that we purport to be, which is an empty and beautiful land that's a very long way away. And we'd be increasing our climate-cred.

The result would be that as the little country that stood up for what was right, we'd become the admiration of the world. So the country you couldn't fly to, would become the country everyone wanted to sail to. And for every boat that moored we could charge a whimsically high admission fee.

So if we banned international flights to and from NZ the country you couldn't fly to, would become the country everyone wanted to sail to. Photo / File

Of course with no planes in there'd be no planes out. We'd no longer be able to be in Sydney in three hours, Venice in 30. But Sydney's burning, Venice drowning and if we really wanted to go we could still take the boat as we did 50 years ago and get a true sense of the size of the world and our place in it.

Meanwhile for most of us there would be no place like home. We'd learn to appreciate it more, take our holidays here - we'd have it largely to ourselves - and we'd stop hankering for the delusion of elsewhere. Frankly, I can't see a downside. Except of course that it couldn't last. The international bullyboys would see to that.

In 1853 four American warships sailed into Tokyo Bay under the command of Commodore Matthew Perry. The commodore had been sent by his government to see whether Japan would like to reconsider its 220-year embargo on buying foreign goods.

The warships carried the first naval guns to fire explosive shells. For the benefit of the locals Commodore Perry put on an artillery display. Shortly afterwards the Japanese signed a piece of paper that the Americans had humorously entitled The Treaty of Peace and Amity. Japan's isolation was over.

And 90 years later the Americans were surprised by Pearl Harbour.