High Country Accord
Media Release

High Country academic “ill-informed”

Visiting American Fulbright scholar Ann Brower has been accused by high country farmers of being “ill-informed and prejudiced” with her criticism of recent land tenure review settlements.

Ms Brower, who is lecturing in natural resource politics at Lincoln University, came to New Zealand after doing battle with the Colorado River authorities for allowing stakeholders to have what she alleged was too much say in the conservation management of the river.

Yesterday she released data showing that 34 high country farmers had been paid up to $5.6 million each by the Crown for their leasehold property interests under tenure review, a process she described as “whack”. She also said some farmers were subdividing or developing their properties after selling some of their land to the Crown for conservation.

This follows a report she issued last year in which she criticised the government’s performance in the South Island tenure review process for “giving away the Crown jewels and paying [farmers] to take them away”.

These conclusions were later discredited by Victoria University professors Neil Quigley and Lewis Evans who said Ms Brower’s claims were “entirely unfounded”, that she had “completely misinterpreted the available data” … and had made a series of claims about the outcome of the process that were “entirely erroneous”.

“Our analysis … makes it implausible that the tenure review process has resulted in any substantial over-payment by the Crown [to farmers],” Quigley and Evans said.

High Country Accord co-chair Ben Todhunter says Ms Brower is using the release of data from tenure review settlements as a platform to air “ill-informed and prejudiced” views.

“Brower has ignored a whole body of New Zealand property law, the findings of the Land Valuation Tribunal and other academic research in reaching her conclusions.

“It seems incredible that someone who has spent about a year in New Zealand could be so sure that she is right and that respected judges and senior academics – including some of her senior Lincoln University colleagues [subs: Refer footnote below] – are wrong.”

Mr Todhunter says Ms Brower totally disregards the fact that a pastoral lease is worth something at the start of a tenure review negotiation.

“She seems to believe that the Crown should be able to buy land of conservation value from lessees for any figure the minister of lands dreams up. This would be patently unfair and an abuse of executive power.

“At present under tenure review, farmers sell their leasehold land to the Crown at market value. They then buy back at market value the area they are permitted to freehold,” he says.

“This seems pretty fair to me. But if Ms Brower has a better way – one which is both legally sound and fits with the Kiwi notion of fair play – I’d like to hear of it.”

Mr Todhunter says farmers have the right to renew their pastoral leases in perpetuity and they own all the improvements on the land – roads, bridges, fences, buildings and soil fertility. They also have the right of exclusive occupation.

“The market has valued those rights as being very close to the value of similar land in freehold title. Hence, if under tenure review farmers sell some of their leasehold land to the Crown, they are likely to get 85-95 per cent of the freehold value for that interest,” Mr Todhunter says.

“If you don’t like private individuals having property rights, or if you object to private individuals getting what you might see as a large sums when they sell their land, this might be offensive.

“But we live in a property-owning democracy where the rule of law applies, private enterprise is encouraged and most land owners value the environment. Ms Brower should respect that.

“She has brought to New Zealand the confrontational politics which contaminated environmental debates in the United States a decade ago and which saw some academics take extreme political positions on one side or another of a debate.

“Things have moved on in the United States. Respect for property rights has encouraged large environmental organisations such as the Nature Conservancy and Delta Waterfowl to work with, rather than against land owners.

Mr Todhunter says the High Country Accord last year approached both Ms Brower and the Lincoln University authorities to ensure her work was peer reviewed, but this had not happened.

Footnote:

Tenure review is a legal process that allows South Island high country farmers with perpetually renewable leases to buy freehold title to their farms in return for selling to the Crown their rights to land of conservation value.

In a recent article in the Otago Daily Times, Lincoln University professor Kevin O’Connor asked whether tenure review had to cost the government and people of New Zealand as much as it does?

“Almost certainly, yes, if the people who have been persuaded to think of those lands as “recreational lands of the Crown” are not prepared to examine in the cold light of law and economics how a perpetually renewal lease can closely approach a freehold value, and how small is a lessor’s [the Crown’s] interest in such a property,” he said.

In the same edition of the Otago Daily Times, Lincoln professor Keith Woodford asked whether the perception that farmers were getting a better deal out of tenure review than the Crown was matched by reality.

“In many cases,” he said, “the perception is based on gross ignorance of what the runholders as leaseholders are giving up and what they gain from getting freehold title.

“The problem starts with a poor understanding in the community, and even among some so-called experts, as to the runholders’ bundle of rights. The notion that the government can somehow simply take back the lease, or perhaps sell it to someone other than the existing leaseholder, is simply a legal fiction.”

ENDS

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