Farmers' threat over leases 'smokescreen'

Environmental lobbyist Forest and Bird says high-country farmers' threats to pull out of the voluntary tenure review process to freehold their Crown leases are a smokescreen.

"Pastoral lessees, not the public, have been the major beneficiaries of tenure review," said Forest and Bird Conservation manager, Kevin Hackwell.

About 273 lessees are lining up to take advantage of a tenure review scheme which allows farmers to freehold the Crown land they use if they relinquish areas of high conservation value to the Government.

Lessees had so far been able to freehold 93,000ha of the high country at "giveaway prices", and only 49,000ha had become conservation land open to the public, he said.

"Conservation ends up with the leftovers. These are the areas that lessees don't want to freehold."

These areas were generally higher altitude lands, which were less productive and less suitable for grazing or subdividing for property development, Mr Hackwell said.

Some lessees had made windfall gains at the public's expense by freeholding leases valued as grazing land, and then selling it as lifestyle blocks near Lake Wanaka, and around Queenstown and Twizel.

The Government is looking at changing the terms of high-country leases - which cover about 3 million hectares or 10 per cent of the nation's land area - lifting their rents to market levels.

Lands Minister Pete Hodgson, who said last week the Government was considering "implications of introducing market rents for pastoral leases", has complained that it is untenable for lessees to be paying rents at 25 to 30 per cent of commercial market rates.

Voluntary tenure reviews began in 1999 under the Shipley National government, when runholders were given the opportunity to freehold their pastoral leases under the Crown Pastoral Land Act (1998).

But some farmers have complained that Government plans to look at seeking market rentals on the leases that continue are designed to encourage them into tenure review.

High Country Accord lobby group joint-chairman Ben Todhunter said last week lessees wanted discussions suspended until after an independent review of leases.

He said negotiations had stalled on 70 of the 154 lessees in the tenure review process.

But Mr Hodgson said in a later interview he was "relaxed" with the threat, although he was unclear what lessees were seeking.

He believed most lessees would stay in the process, but the Government had already announced that if farmers did not want to freehold, the state would continue to lease out their land.

"I am relaxed. I don't think they will pull out en masse."

Both sides of the debate needed to take stock.

"We all need to get over ourselves," he said.

The Government was not embarking on a high-country land grab and the Department of Conservation's plans for 22 alpine parks was not a sign it wanted more land than previously indicated.

"Many runholders will find themselves farming a moderate reduction in stock over a smaller area," he said.

The terms of reference for a review of the method of valuing Crown-owned high-country leasehold land and calculating the level of rent would be made public within the next two weeks.

In Wellington, the Act party likened the voluntary tenure reviews to Scotland's "Highland clearances" and said farmers should take a class action to the High Court.
The Crown Pastoral Land Act - the result of six years' negotiation with farmers - allows high-country pastoral lease-holders to freehold their commercial land by transferring areas with high conservation, or Maori or historic values, to the Crown.

- NZPA