Labour Welcomes Mackenzie Basin Decision

Labour Welcomes Mackenzie Basin Decision

The Labour Party Environment spokesperson Charles Chauvel has congratulated the Environmental Defence Society (EDS) on its High Court victory last week challenging cubicle dairy farming in the Mackenzie basin.

Charles Chauvel has called for the Minister for the Environment to show leadership in dealing with the issues that the case has highlighted.

Last week, the High Court quashed resource consents and certificates of compliance issued by Waitaki District Council for 3 large cubicle farming operations in the Mackenzie Country.

The consents related to 8,555 hectares of the Mackenzie basin. They permitted housing 17,850 dairy cows in large sheds around the clock from March to October and for 12 hours per day. They allowed up to 1.1 million litres of effluent to have been discharged to pasture daily. The cows would have been kept in stalls, fed in the sheds and milked robotically.

"New Zealanders have legitimate concerns about massive scale factory-style dairying,” Charles Chauvel said.
"The case shows the importance of not allowing individual resource consents for that type of activity to determine the fate of an entire ecosystem.

"We agree with EDS that the case demonstrates a failure of public policy. Rather than seeking to amend the Resource Management Act further to make factory-style dairying easier, the Minister for the Environment urgently needs to provide national guidance on environmental protection for unique and fragile landscapes like the Mackenzie basin.

"Action is also needed by the regional council to identify a nationally important landscape; and the two district councils need to develop coherent and effective district plans.

"Reforms to ensure that existing responsibilities under legislation are exercised are needed, not reforms that will blindly promote more intensive dairy farming, despite the environmental consequences", Charles Chauvel says.

ENDS