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Thousands Of Farmers Spared From Unworkable Box-Ticking Exercise
Federated Farmers says changes to resource management laws announced today will spare thousands of farmers from needing an unnecessary resource consent just to keep farming.
"I’d love to say this is a practical and pragmatic change from the Government - but it’s actually just commonsense," Federated Farmers RMA reform spokesperson Mark Hooper says.
"Without these urgent changes to the discharge rules under section 70 of the RMA, we would have been facing a ridiculous, expensive and totally unworkable situation.
"Thousands of farmers would have needed to go through the process of applying for a new resource consent, and ticking boxes, for absolutely no environmental gain.
"A flood of consent applications would have landed with local councils all at once, creating a bureaucratic backlog and stalling the engine room of the economy at the same time."
Hooper says councils will still be able to require consent for genuinely high-risk activities but won’t be forced to do so when something such as a farm plan is a better option.
"Taking a risk-based approach is much more sensible - particularly when many farmers already have farm plans in place that will drive real environmental improvements."
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