A spate of antisocial behaviour by drunken Australians has not prompted Queenstown police to remove the welcome mat.
Over the weekend, police dealt with seven separate incidents involving Australians, including theft, nudity, disorderly behaviour and gross intoxication.
Sergeant Mark Gill said although the numbers appeared to show the Australians behaving badly, it was proportional to Queenstown's Australian visitor ratio with other nationalities.
He wanted visitors to feel safe when on holiday in the resort and realise the arrests occurred because police would not tolerate small crime and intoxication in the central business district (CBD).
Most of the Australians were arrested for minor offences, which would often go undetected in other centres.
"It's a small CBD and with the police that we've got we are dealing with this minor disorder a lot of the time because we can.
"We don't want people to see Aussies as causing a problem, because they're not."
"Let's not blow this out of proportion."
Incidents involving Australians at the weekend included a 27-year-old man who ate another patron's pie at Ferg-baker late on Friday night, a 24-year-old man who assaulted a doorman at a nightclub the same night and two drunk brothers who threw punches at a doorman on Saturday night.
Proportionally, more Australians were arrested because they made up the biggest number of overseas visitors to Queenstown.
For the number of international visitors Queenstown receives every year, the tourist town was doing well in the crime stakes, Sgt Gill said.
Queenstown airport statistics for the year ending May 2012 show that of the 2,615,921 international visitors, 1,159,444 were Australian. During this same period, the transtasman neighbours made up 35% of Queenstown's tourist pool, and 40% of them came from New South Wales. Only 214,800 holiday-makers from the United Kingdom (11%) and 182,972 Americans (10%) visited.
The common denominator in many small crimes in Queenstown's CBD was too much alcohol and that was an issue for the police, Sgt Gill said.
The resort was "extremely safe" and those working in security, such as nightclub doormen, were doing a great job at controlling those and preventing things from getting out of order, he said.
