Not one hectare more!

Yesterday the government announced that it was ending the farmer's rort of high country tenure review, under which over 350,000 hectares of public land has been corruptly privatised for next to nothing (and then frequently flicked on for 500 times more than farmers paid for it). But while this will protect most of the high country, there are still 30 leases in the process. The Minister has said these will be decided on a "case-by-case basis". But what should this mean?

Simple: it should mean not one hectare more. This is public land, and it should stay public. Unless the government has a binding contract, it should simply walk away from negotiations.

Can they do this? Largely, yes. The Crown Pastoral Land Act allows any tenure review to be discontinued at any time. If things have advanced further in the process, to a preliminary proposal, then that can be ended too - the language is discretionary: the Commissioner of Crown Lands may publicly notify a preliminary proposal, and (after consultation) may make a substantive proposal. It is only when the substantive proposal is accepted by a leaseholder that the language changes to "must" and imposes "an irrevocable authority to and obligation on the Commissioner to take the appropriate actions required".

How many leases are in this situation? According to LINZ's tenure review statistics (last updated in December), 8 properties have accepted substantive proposals (some as far back as 2016). So, we're stuck with those, unless we legislate. As for the rest, 8 preliminary proposals have been advertised for public submissions, 17 are currently being consulted on with leaseholders, and one is being explored. All of those processes can be stopped dead, and they should be. We should not surrender a single hectare more of public land to farmers.