Foreign buyers seek boltholes
Wealthy foreign investors who snap up vast South Island pastoral leases are not interested in developing the land, critics say.
Instead, people such as disgraced US broadcaster Matt Lauer are likely to just want to use it as a bolthole, said Forest and Bird conservation ambassador Gerry McSweeney and Central Otago resident Bill Gordon.
Lauer was fired from his job as an NBC host in November after allegations of sexual misconduct. For the last 25 years successive governments have been negotiating with leaseholders, offering them freehold title to land they can farm more intensively, in exchange for land being protected for conservation and recreation.
But Lauer, who last year bought the lease for the 10,759ha Hunter Valley high country station, does not want to go through the tenure review process. His lease extends from the northern shores of Lake Hawea into the Hunter Valley, and guards access to Hawea Conservation Park. At the time of the sale last year, the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) did not secure access for trampers or hunters to the park, because Lauer opposed it. The broadcaster relied on a clause that the owner is ‘‘entitled to exclusive possession and quiet enjoyment of the land’’. ‘‘These people aren’t necessarily buying these properties in order to develop them into dairy support or triple the number of sheep or whatever, what they really want is to have a bolthole and total control over access,’’ said McSweeney, who is a high country tourism operator and farm owner.
In 2004 country singer Shania Twain and her husband Mutt Lange bought the pastoral lease of Motatapu Station for $21.5 million. Following their divorce, he bought the leases of Mount Soho, Glencoe and Coronet Peak stations to give him a total of 53,000ha. Lange opens part of the property for the annual Motatapu multi-sport event and placed Queen Elizabeth II covenants over the land, offering public access with 21 tracks and trails. This enabled him to retain control over access and meant the land would not undergo tenure review. Gordon proposes that when pastoral leases change hands, the new owners ought to be forced to undergo tenure review.