Landowner, lawyer scathing of council
The Southland District Council has been accused of dirty tactics in a bid to “nail” a landowner.
Te Anau Downs station owner Peter Chartres made the accusation at a council meeting last week, in the wake of a long-standing battle against the local authority.
The council had previously applied for enforcement orders to manage what were perceived as unlawful indigenous vegetation clearance practices at the Te Anau Downs station owned by Chartres.
But the case was lost in the Environment Court and in 2022 the council was ordered to pay $300,000 costs to the station.
When the decision was released, Chartres welcomed the ruling clearing him of unlawful vegetation clearances dating back to 2001, and said the council’s approach had been overzealous.
At the time, the council’s chief executive Cameron McIntosh and mayor Rob Scott publicly acknowledged the council got it wrong, and vowed to do better.
They asked for an independent review of the circumstances which led to the outcome, and any lessons from it.
The review document, prepared by environmental management consultant John Hutching and resource management lawyer Ian Gordon, was released in late 2023 and made 12 recommendations to address council processes and improve services.
The recommendations included that the council urgently review the biodiversity aspects of its district plan.
The review found the council’s performance was not always optimal, but there was no single fault or omission that caused the result, and no single individual could be held most responsible.
Rather, there was a “decade-long concert of factors aligned in a way that was difficult to foresee, difficult to avoid and difficult to navigate”. Chartres, with lawyers in tow, addressed Southland District councillors about the independent review findings at a council meeting last week.
He expressed extreme disappointment with the review which had been a “complete waste of time” and a waste of ratepayers money.
He and his lawyers were not spoken to by the reviewers so the review could not be called independent, he said.
Chartres was astounded the review found that no single individual at the council could be held to be most responsible.
“From our perspective, the council staff that were at both mediations should have been held directly responsible, along with council’s legal representatives.”
Council staff involved in the proceedings had been “out of control” and had been able to act without restraint from councillors, he believed. “If nothing else, we want councillors to act with greater oversight of similar proceedings.”
The staff’s key failing was its “overzealous and unreasonable interpretation of the application of biodiversity rules”.
Over the course of the four years he had been subjected to “low, dirty tactics” by the council in an attempt to nail him, and it felt like a personal vendetta, he said.
Barrister James Winchester, acting for Chartres, told councillors that he believed the council had been ill disciplined and had taken a punitive approach that was at times dishonest or sneaky.
He could “only assume” elected councillors did not have oversight of the actions of the staff involved in the case. “I have read the review and the inferences that this litigation was driven and fermented by Peter is such an outrageous suggestion it makes my mouth drop open.”
Another of Chartres’ lawyers, Rex Chapman, said Chartres had been portrayed as an environmental vandal, when the opposite was the truth. He had cleared brackenfern, regrowth manuka scrub and exotic weeds on the station. “He did not cut or damage, in any way, mature indigenous vegetation, or other significant areas.”
Southland District mayor Rob Scott, in a statement after the meeting, said it was important to clarify that the purpose of the independent review was not to look at the court decision – the council had already acknowledged its actions were wrong.
“Council accepts that there is significant work to do to improve core planning and consenting services, which was part of the reason for commissioning the independent review,” Scott said.