Tenure review needs a review

Tenure review and the legal framework surrounding it are extremely difficult to understand fully, which might, facetiously, be seen as enough of a reason in itself for a review of the current system.

The aim, after all, is simple enough: promoting ecologically sustainable management of New Zealand’s vast high country. Scratch the surface, though, and reasons begging a careful look at a system in place for the past 20-odd years, under both Labour and National-led governments, quickly emerge.

The amount of money effectively paid by the taxpayer to many of the farmers holding Crownawarded pastoral leases, in order to have some of that land placed in the conservation estate, while the remainder is returned to the farmers freehold, is one. In some instances, freehold land has been quickly on-sold for hundreds of times what farmers effectively paid.

Early this year, a Stuff feature, focused on the question ‘‘Who owns the high country?’’, highlighted some of the more controversial deals concluded as a result of the process. One property, Alpha Burn Station, had come through the review process with the farmer owning two-thirds of the land. Based on what was paid by the farmer and the Crown respectively, the farmer had effectively ‘‘paid $50,000 for exclusive ownership of thousands of hectares on Lake Wanaka’’, it was reported.

Land Information New Zealand has defended the process. A review commissioned in 2006 resulted in the Armstrong report, with lead author Donn Armstrong saying once farmers’ hitherto unsecure leases were made perpetually renewable in 1948, their occupation of the land became more valuable than the Crown’s ownership of it.

Academic Ann Brower, of Canterbury University, who has referred to tenure review as ‘‘a rort’’, has argued in response, though, that this does not explain the lack of consistency across the reviews completed thus far. She suggested last year, in a co-authored academic paper, that the laws covering tenure review were being ignored in the Mackenzie Basin, and its unique landscapes and biodiversity were being only ‘‘half-heartedly’’ protected in the tenure review process.

That sense has ramped up in recent months, with a protest at Simons Pass Station last week against plans by the pastoral leaseholder, Murray Valentine, to run a dairy business with up to 15,000 cows on the property. Pastoral leases were originally awarded for sheep farming. The 5500ha property near Lake Pukaki is currently subject to a tenure review proposal awaiting a decision from the Commissioner of Crown Lands, which could see more than 4300ha becoming freehold. That has enraged conservation interests including the Environmental Defence Society, Federated Mountain Clubs and Greenpeace, resulting in the arrests of 12 protesters at the site.

A comprehensive review, which would presumably require a moratorium, would plainly draw protest from those pastoral leaseholders engaged in, or yet to go through, the tenure review process. But there’s too much at stake, both environmentally and in terms of New Zealanders’ ownership of, and access to, the high country, simply to allow the process to plough on unchecked.

‘‘There’s too much at stake, both environmentally and in terms of New Zealanders’ ownership of, and

access to, the high country, simply to allow the process to plough on unchecked.’’