A rocky start
From the beginning the agency's name was not to be abbreviated, and if at all, to Conservation - of course, the acronym DOC appeared within days. Ironically, it was the Department that would need help. The first year's budget - around $185 million in 2007 dollars - was said to have been overspent by 3.1 per cent, which was then removed from the 1988-1989 allocation. (DOC revenues from national park hut fees and concession fees had not been included in the accounting.)
Compounding the issue was that DOC had been launched with no central financial system; the eight DOC regions around the country and 34 districts operated more or less autonomously.
DOC's inheritance - an early hut
It was difficult to track overall expenditure, at a time when offices were being set up, and physical assets divvied out in the environmental restructuring. The State-owned enterprises Landcorp and Forestry Corporation were believed to have taken the good vehicles, leaving DOC a motley collection. There was a tendency to grab assets whether needed or not, and wheeling and dealing became popular at district level: in one transaction, a grader was traded for a photocopier.
Those who could splashed out on flash office fit-outs which incurred instant public condemnation from the environmental NGOs: the money was supposed to have gone on conservation gains, not Maurice Kain fabrics and pink-and-grey corporate interiors.
It was partly for this perceived extravagance that government would come down so heavily on the Department.
DOC was forced to borrow $11.5 million to be repaid over seven years to make ends meet. In 1989 Coopers & Lybrand associates were brought in to help restructure the Department, to improve the match between staffing levels and the budget. The regions and districts were reformed into 14 Conservancies. The four-tier structure was reduced to three, with the district conservator level removed, and 188 staff were made redundant.
The next Director-General, David McDowell, envisaged a "spare, lean DOC team". He had little option: DOC had two-thirds of the funding that was allocated pre-1987 for conservation purposes, in line with higher expectations of the public service. The Department had gone into bat with missionary zeal but with one arm behind its back and it would have to cope financially, as well as align itself politically.
Signage inherited from NZFS
It was unprecedented at the time for a government agency to have a statutory advocacy role such as DOC's, and early on staff had taken it up with enthusiasm. As an early example, the Department challenged Electricorp over minimum flows in the Whanganui River and won the case, with the support of NGOs but to rumblings within Cabinet.
DOC staff adopted a thrifty, no.8 wire approach to the business, which became a source of pride. But the main effect of the 1989 restructuring was to bring the staff closer together, and over time dilute the staff cultures brought into DOC from the various parent organisations.
The fee system for national park huts and DOC campgrounds was extended to forest park huts in 1989 and 1990, to general public outcry at having to pay $4 a night, and later grudging acceptance.
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