Wednesday 30 May 2007

Media release

New Website Exposes Failure of High Country Tenure Review

A new group calling for tenure review to stop has launched a comprehensive website on the failure of South Island high country tenure review for the taxpayer, and future generations.

The site can be visited at www.stoptenurereview.co.nz from today. It posts links to research and other background information on why tenure review is a failure and should stop. It also says what government should do about the problem.

The website has been designed by the StopTenureReview Group of private individuals who have been involved in, or closely observed tenure review for more than a decade.

“The site has been established because of the low level of informed debate on the biggest land reform exercise in New Zealand for a century. There’s a ‘fog of ignorance’ about the massive carve up of huge chunks of the South Island High Country. The public need access to the other side of the story,” says spokesperson Ainslie Talbot.

The site provides up-to-date information on the failure of the Government agency, Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), to protect the public interest. It has links to authoritative independent research, provides a concise and workable set of solutions to the problems, and a forum page for feedback.

“We have seen the shortcomings of the process firsthand – LINZ and DoC’s failure to protect landscapes important for biodiversity and recreation, the gifting of hundreds of thousands of hectares of valuable publicly owned high country to lessees,” says spokesperson Gottlieb Braun-Elwart.

Results to date show when it comes to negotiations with the lessee, the Crown’s main driver is to ‘close the deal’ -- at almost any cost to the taxpayer. That means trading away ecological protection, fair financial return and good recreational access, time after time.

In short, tenure review is the sale of the century, and the NZ public is the loser!

The StopTenureReview Group says there are alternative solutions. The Crown must stop and never recommence tenure review. It must retain and manage leases to protect the interests of the public, not the
interests of lessees. To add to conservation land, grazing rights can be bought from willing lessees over whole leases, natural heritage values protected, and any residue auctioned off for a fair return to the taxpayer. This approach would give vastly superior outcomes for the public at less cost.

Stoptenurereview.co.nz will be a regularly updated source of information for the media and the public on this major land reform involving 20% of the South Island and 10% of New Zealand; a huge 2.4 million hectares. The real estate value of this Crown-owned land runs into billions of dollars.

Stoptenurereview.co.nz demonstrates that:

- taxpayers have not been getting a fair return for land privatised by lessees

- many high country lessees have been making huge profits following freeholding, through subdivision

- ecological values and threatened species which are supposed to be protected have ‘gone out the window’

- easy access to public conservation land through former leasehold is a half-truth

High country Tenure Review has got to stop and be reassessed. It is a mistake. It is selling out future generations.

ENDS

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