Opinion

Bureaucracy at its very best

Alternative View

Alan Emerson

I MUST confess to being allergic to meaningless bureaucracy.

Here in Masterton we had two old tractors in the playground which were deemed unsafe because they didn’t comply with national safety standards.

They were audited by some faceless Wellington bureaucrat who decided they weren’t safe so the tractors had to be removed.

My simple question is to ask how many kids were actually injured by playing on the machinery?

Then we had that superbureaucracy, the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) reviewing speed limits on roads. Going to the agency’s website, you’d wonder if it wasn’t a bigger bureaucratic exercise than the Paris Accord.

There’s to be consultation for Africa before a decision will be made, costing both the taxpayer and ratepayer millions for absolutely no benefit.

The road between the farm and Masterton is your typical winding rural road of 50 kilometres. You can drive at the 100kmph speed limit rarely and as rural folk do, we drive to the conditions. I’m aware of a few accidents on the road over the past 20 years.

I’m also aware speed wasn’t a factor in the crashes, so changing the speed limit is pointless.

Further it is manifestly stupid. I’ve never seen a traffic cop east of Masterton, so having variable speed limits is a complete waste of time.

Behaviour won’t change and the civil servants at the NZTA will have the warm fuzzies having spent a fortune for no benefit.

Farmers are also about to have problems with stock cartage with a new initiative from NZTA.

Some of the livestock transport operators are going to have to have GPS and electronic logbooks where the NZTA can monitor them at will.

Now the rules say you can’t drive for longer than 13 hours and you must have two half-hour rest breaks every five-and-a-half hours. After you’ve driven your 13 hours, the driver must have at least a 10-hour break.

That’s fine in theory but not in practice.

The problem is simple with stock sales. Stock needs to be at the sale yards early so prospective buyers can have a good look at them. This can mean the stock could be picked up in, for example, South Wairarapa at 4am to get to Fielding on time.

The driver then waits until they have to transport stock that has been purchased. They may not be loaded until four o’clock, meaning the driver can only legally drive for an hour before hitting their 13-hour limit.

As happens with hide-bound government departments, there is no flexibility – especially when the monitoring is electronic.

The impracticality of that system is excessive.

There is a shortage of adequately qualified truck drivers. Operators are not able to bring a driver home and send another out.

There are animal welfare issues. If a driver parks up animals will suffer. That will also happen if a relief driver is sent out, if one is available.

If the driver is being paid they’re technically working even if they are sitting down at a sale. Many have beds in their trucks and can sleep on the job. The rules don’t take that into account, such is the bureaucratic intransigence of the NZTA.

Realistically a driver can drive four hours to a stock sale, have a rest or sleep for six hours and then be unable to drive back with a loaded truck. The driver will have only worked eight hours with a long rest in between. I do not believe any broken rule is a road safety issue, more an issue of a hide-bound government agency. If a relief driver can be found, that will increase the cost of transport to a farmer. It is an unnecessary complication and expense.

Large stock sales happen just once a week. They are not an everyday occurrence. I would have thought that flexibility on one day in a week would be sensible and realistic. It would stop unnecessary expense for a farmer and provide better animal welfare outcomes.

I remain unconvinced that working one long day a week, with a considerable rest in the middle, is a road safety issue. The rules should be changed.

My view of the NZTA is that it defies gravity with its incompetence and concentration on the irrelevant, such as variable speed limits on rural roads. A simple and recent example was that Rimutaka Hill was changed to Remutaka by someone in Wellington. NZTA immediately altered the signs to be politically correct, yet they can’t get Transmission Gully finished on time and to budget.

They hark on about the road toll but have shown over the decades they don’t have a clue. The last Easter road toll is witness to that.

New minister Michael Wood faces the massive challenge of making NZTA realistic and accountable – I wish him every success.

POINTLESS: Alan Emerson believes an NZTA initiative to have some livestock transport operators monitored via GPS and electronic logbooks is an unnecessary complication and expense.

Your View

Alan Emerson is a semi-retired Wairarapa farmer and businessman: dath.emerson@gmail.com

Beach brings the twitching itch out

From the Ridge

Steve Wyn-Harris

FOUR years ago, three mates in quick succession died. The third being my brother-in-law Glen, whose 60th birthday we had been to just four weeks earlier, before a brain aneurysm killed this healthy and vital man instantly.

Jane and I lost a beloved friend, as did many others. My sister Susanna lost her soulmate and their kids a great father. They were obviously devastated but now have learnt to live with his loss and dealing with it easier.

It was the suddenness of his death that was the shock. Alan, one of the other two, had battled leukaemia for a year or so and when the end came, it was a blessing of sorts but not unexpected.

Anyway, the result of going to these three funerals was that I reevaluated what I thought I wanted to do during my sunset years.

We’d bought four small blocks of land over 30 years, worked hard, developed them, paid off debt and then did it again. I had thought I might do it once more and the balance sheet would allow us to do it on a bit bigger scale.

Instead I did something right out of character and bought a non performing asset, a beach section. This was something Jane had always talked about and has always said she’d just once like to build a house.

Which is what we have been doing for the past three years.

The end of the painting is in sight and I’m out here at the moment putting down some eucalyptus regnans flooring. It’s a bit tricky but satisfying, as these were gum trees I planted 35 years ago, pruned, thinned, had milled, tongue and grooved, and filleted and dried all for this moment.

Indeed, the house is built out of pine trees I planted and pruned and partly paid for from a small forestry harvest a couple of years ago of trees I planted, with another next summer to help pay off some more of the cost of the build.

We’ve really enjoyed the experience but it has required a fair bit of ‘bandwidth’ so has made our busy lives busier.

I tell you all this to set the scene of what’s been spinning my wheels as I’ve come out here the past few months as we do the finishing work.

There is a Department of Conservation reserve adjacent to the house on the other side of the estuary, and DOC asked for a volunteer to trap the vermin to protect some endangered birds.

I willingly offered my services and have caught rats, a ferret and a stoat, but hope to catch many more heading towards breeding season in the spring.

I figured I should know something about the birds I’m trying to help, so I bought a book on New Zealand birds and find myself peering through binoculars and slowly but steadily building up a list of birds I’ve spotted.

Bird watching or being a ‘twitcher’ is the last thing I thought I might end up doing or enjoying, but here we are.

Over the past few months I’ve spotted 20 different shore and seabirds in the estuary and a dozen more familiar land birds.

The NZ dotterel is why the reserve was put in place, as they are under threat due to habitat loss and there looks to be about 20 making this their home.

There are a good number of variable oystercatchers who are also under threat for the same reason.

A favourite are the eastern bar-tailed godwit, who have been here over the summer in good numbers.

Māori believed they flew north accompanying the spirits of the deceased.

A couple of weeks ago they suddenly disappeared to undertake their epic flight, with a few stopovers to the Yellow Sea in North Korea to refuel and before heading to Alaska to breed.

Their return flight of 11,000km in September from Alaska to NZ non-stop over 10 days or so is now known to be the longest single flight of any bird. Even the four-month-old young make this amazing flight.

The large graceful Caspian terns cruise along the estuary searching for fish and sifting in the shallows are elegant white royal spoonbills.

An unexpected pastime watching these birds, but something that is giving me a great deal of pleasure.

JOURNEY: Eastern bar-tailed godwits’ return flight of 11,000km from Alaska to New Zealand, non-stop over 10 days or so, is now known to be the longest single flight of any bird. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

GUARDIANS OF THE LAND: Land ownership is always conditional and never absolute.

CPLR Bill hits rocky ground

The Braided Trail

Keith Woodford

THE Crown Pastoral Land Reform (CPLR) Bill has struck rocky ground as it now works its way through the Environment Select Committee stage. The Bill is opposed vigorously by most and perhaps all of the remaining 171 pastoral leaseholders in highcountry New Zealand. These are the people who did not reach any settlement with the Crown during Tenure Review over the past two decades.

The importance of this CPLR Bill extends well beyond the pastoral leaseholders themselves. It is also relevant to any New Zealander who has an interest in land law and the ownership of land. It is also important to anyone who has an interest in high country conservation.

There have been 192 submissions to the Bill from interested parties. The submissions fit into two broad categories. The leaseholder submissions argue that the proposed new rules are bureaucratic and unworkable, showing a lack of understanding of high country realities. However, non-leaseholder submissions strongly support moves to weaken the current leaseholder property rights in the interests of conservation.

In this article I will focus on one leaseholder submission from the owners of The Lakes Station, which lies between Lake Sumner and Lake Taylor in North Canterbury.

Two of the three joint owners of The Lakes Station are identified in the submission as “Hugh and Sian Fletcher”. What is not explicit, although it would be recognised by most high-country folk, is that Sian Fletcher is the same person as Sian Elias who for many years was Chief Justice of New Zealand.

Reading The Lakes Station submission leads quickly to a conclusion that it has been written by someone with considerable legal expertise. Arguments are developed to demonstrate that the draft Bill does “not reflect good legislation practice”. The submission states that, if enacted in its present state, the legislation would inevitably be challenged through the court system.

The language is polite but the criticisms are withering. The submission even goes as far as rewriting the draft Bill. That is something I have never before seen in a submission.

But first, some recap about what the CPLR Bill is all about.

The pastoral history of most high country runs goes back to around the 1850s. However, the key legislation is the 1948 Land Act, which gave leaseholders perpetually renewable 33-year leases. The division of rights between leaseholders and the Crown meant that the leaseholder owned all improvements, including soil fertility, improved pastures, fencing, watering systems, tracks and buildings. The Crown retained residual rights in the unimproved value of the land for which it would be paid an annual lease fee.

A fundamental right of the leaseholder is ‘quiet enjoyment’. This right means that the public has no right to enter the land. This allocation of rights has been confirmed in various court cases. The exception is that a designated agent of the Crown may enter the property subject to giving appropriate notice to inspect observance of various land covenants.

Then in 1998, the National government of the time enacted the Crown Pastoral Land Act (CPLA) which, among other things, codified a process of tenure review. The fundamental principle of tenure review was that the productive lower country should change from lease to freehold and the higher more fragile country should be retired from grazing and revert to the Crown.

As part of tenure review, the principle was that leaseholders would be compensated for retiring land from grazing and the Crown would be compensated for residual rights that it was giving up on land that was converted to freehold.

A little less than half of the pastoral leases came to agreement with the Government as to the respective transactions. On those properties there are no longer any pastoral leases. However, for a range of reasons, somewhat more than half the pastoral runs were unable to come to an agreement with the Crown as to a fair split and so tenure review processes failed.

Over time, the tenure review processes became embroiled in controversy. Much of this related to misunderstanding by the general public as to what the runholders were buying when freeholding the land. Most of the public did not understand that leaseholders already owned most of the value of the property and were simply upgrading, for a fee, their leaseholder rights to freehold rights.

At this point it is necessary to highlight that leasehold rights and freehold rights are simply two different bundles of property rights. Land can never be owned in an absolute sense the way that a car, a shirt or a table can be owned.

The way I used to explain it to my students at Lincoln University was that if I wanted to get a hammer and put big dents all over my car, then I had a legal right to do so. That was my right because I owned the car absolutely. It might reflect badly on my mental state, but that was a different matter.

In contrast, there are many restrictions as to what people can do with land that they consider they ‘own’. It is definitely illegal to destroy land. In essence, land ownership, be that leasehold or freehold, involves custodianship. Consequently, many actions require approval from relevant authorities. Land ownership is always conditional and never absolute.

There is a widespread public perception that under Tenure Review the Government gave away its rights too cheaply. In some cases that may be true. But if under-valuation was a generality, then why did the remaining 171 runholders not take up the supposed gift they were being offered?

The problem now is what should be done to protect ecological values on the remaining 171 pastoral leases?

The CPLR Bill before Parliament, which is currently at the Select Committee stage, does this by introducing a new set of regulatory procedures to constrain what runholders can do. The Lakes Station and other submitters claim that these regulations are impractical and in their current form take away existing property rights.

The Lakes Station submission draws on the established common law principle that the Crown has overriding responsibilities to honour existing property rights, and to provide compensation for any property rights that are removed. This principle relates to both leasehold and freehold ownership systems. It is something that any ‘Government of the day’ is not entitled to legislate away.

The CPLR Bill was first introduced to Parliament in 2020 by Green Party Minister Eugenie Sage. Although the Greens are no longer part of the Government, Sage has continued as chair of the Environment Select Committee that is responsible for this Bill. This situation does not impress pastoral groups.

At some stage, the Government may need to look again at whether the existing Bill provides the path forward that it seeks. Although ‘Tenure Review’ has come to the end of its life, at least by that name, the fundamental principles of protecting fragile land and freeholding productive land are hard to argue against.

The much-maligned tenure review process led to 372,000ha, or 3720 square kilometres, entering the conservation estate through to 2017. As a mountain person, I applaud that every time I cross those lands.

In moving forward once again, we need to do so within a framework where the Crown honours existing rights and compensates accordingly when these are taken away. That underpins all New Zealand land law.

If I wanted to get a hammer and put big dents all over my car, then I had a legal right to do so. That was my right because I owned the car absolutely. It might reflect badly on my mental state, but that was a different matter.

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My previous articles on high country issues are archived at https:// keithwoodford.wordpress.com/ category/the-high-country/