KEY POINTS:
Litter piled along the roadsides, graffiti scrawled across walls, derelict buildings decaying on the corner: what a welcome to New Zealand.
This is the sorry sight that greets travellers travelling from Auckland International Airport through to Manukau City.
It is a welcome that Whitianga resident Steve Hart was appalled to experience on his return from a recent trip to Brisbane.
"If I was a visitor coming to New Zealand, having been sold it as a clean, green destination, I would be quite horrified," he said.
Hart took the southern route from the airport, travelling down Puhinui Rd, on to SH20, and then on to Wiri Station Rd.
The Herald on Sunday travelled the same route to see how visitors would be greeted on their first trip through our countryside.
The first part of the drive, down Puhinui Rd and through an industrial zone, might be dull, but it is at least fairly clean.
But once we turned on to SH20, the roadside left a lot to be desired.
Bottles, cans, food wrappers and bits of building material were scattered along the corrugated iron fences, and graffiti covered the wall of a service station.
Further along the road, an entire plastic bag of rubbish sat on the roadside. Behind a rickety wooden fence, plastic bags, old shoes and gloves, fast-food wrappers and cigarette packets had piled up over a stretch of several metres. On the corner of the highway and Wiri Station Rd, a derelict old building with holes in the walls was covered in graffiti, and further tagging defaced concrete blocks down the road.
And on entering the Papakura service area, where a petrol station, cafe and McDonald's restaurant wait for weary travellers, the first sign we saw directing traffic had also had an encounter with a spraypaint can.
"I think it's that first impression that is really important... For ourselves, as New Zealanders, we should probably hang our heads a little bit," Hart said.
Tourism New Zealand chief executive George Hickton said most visitors came to New Zealand for the landscape. "Eighty-five per cent are coming because we're seen as a beautiful country, so it goes without saying that we need to look like that." Hickton said people were often willing to forgive the urban environment they drove through but might not be in the future. "Our own clean and green credentials are being looked at harder. It's important for communities to understand just how much tourist volume we have through the country, and that it is our largest export earner."
Transit New Zealand, which is responsible for the clean-up of the highway roadsides we travelled, said contractors cleared litter every day in the Auckland/Manukau area, and the entire network of roads was covered at least once a week.
Operations manager Joseph Flanagan said much of the rubbish on the route had drifted on to private land, but he promised that Transit would work with the Manukau City Council to approach the landowners and get the area cleaned up.
Councillor Dick Quax, chairman of Manukau City Council's community safety committee, said he was particularly concerned about the amount of graffiti in his city, which made the area look "a little bit Third World".
"In defence of the council, we are putting a fair effort into making the environment better. We have to stand up and take responsibility for the look of our city, but individuals have to take some responsibility for the way they act, too."
The Manukau Beautification Trust tries its best to paint over graffiti around the city, but tagging eradication manager Barbara Carney said it was the owners of commercial properties who were responsible for eliminating graffiti on their buildings.
