Federated Farmers: Property Rights Returning To Farmers

Federated Farmers say the Government’s new planning and environment laws will protect property rights and improve productivity, while reducing red tape and compliance costs for farmers.

"We welcome the Government’s blueprint for new planning legislation to replace the broken Resource Management Act," Federated Farmers RMA reform spokesperson Mark Hooper says.

"Farmers are spending way too much time and money on costly resource consents and processes that are holding up investment in things like new water storage and rural infrastructure.

"The red tape and box-ticking has become totally ridiculous, which is why Federated Farmers have been pushing for sensible RMA reform that better protects landowners’ property rights."

Getting RMA reform right was one of Federated Farmers’ 12 policy priorities for restoring farmer confidence in the lead-up to the last election.

"We think the Government have delivered a pragmatic and common-sense plan that will put respect for property rights front and centre," Hooper says.

"This means that, unless you’re doing something that will have a negative impact outside your property’s boundary, you can essentially do what you want on your own land."

Hooper says the new laws will mean that, where a council takes a property right away, the council will have to pay compensation for the loss of property value.

"Federated Farmers has always pushed back on councils’ overzealous use of overlays like Outstanding Natural Landscapes (ONLs), Significant Natural Areas (SNAs), or Sites and Areas of Significance to Māori (SASMs).

"Farmers who’ve had a significant and unrelenting loss of property rights from restrictive overlays will be welcoming this news of a stricter regime."

He says farmers who’ve been forced to operate under an ONL overlay have faced ridiculous and impractical rules.

"We’re talking about little details like what colour their shed can be and needing a resource consent to put in a new fence, through to bigger hurdles such as being unable to develop or convert their land.

"Compensating farmers for the loss of private property rights isn’t just fair, it also means councils will be much more reasonable and pragmatic about when they apply an overlay.

"Requiring councils to pay compensation will create a healthy tension where councils must have some skin in the game before putting restrictions over large swathes of the country."

Hooper says, when an overlay places a heavy restriction on land use, there’s always a cost to someone - the question is who will bear that cost.

"In the past that cost has fallen on the farmer or landowner, but any benefits from the overlay have been to the wider community. That’s just not fair.

"Hopefully, under this new system, councils will be a lot more judicious about where they place an overlay and, when an overlay is used, the costs are sheeted home to those that receive the benefit."

Federated Farmers is also welcoming the shift to national standards, while noting the Freshwater Farm Plan system is the ready-to-go standard for farming.

"It’s never made sense for farmers to be farming by resource consent. Resource consents are a costly, time-consuming and bureaucratic way to improve farming practice," Hooper says.

"At the same time, caution needs to be exercised in trying to standardise farming too much, as every farm, catchment and community is different.

"The Freshwater Farm Plan model, introduced by the previous Government and amended by the current, is a tool that can replace the need for a resource consent.

"It is a ready-to-go standard for farming with huge buy in from farmers, sector groups, and regional councils"

Federated Farmers will be keeping an eye on proposals for greater use of market mechanisms, stricter penalty regimes and charges for resource use.

Market mechanisms can be a great way to create a property right for resource use and allow more efficient mitigation of impacts than a strict standard, but they don’t work everywhere, Hooper says.

"Nutrient loss, for example, is near-impossible to measure accurately and not something that leads itself to a market mechanism. We much prefer the Freshwater Farm Plan model.

"A shift to national standards can be supported by stricter penalty regimes, but these need to be kept reasonable for the nature of farming.

"There needs to be some recognition that things like the weather, animals and natural conditions aren’t always in the farmer's control.

"Farmers support mechanisms for cost-recovery, and we’d like to see them used more in local government, where farmers are paying huge rates bills for services they don’t use.

"We’re open to cost-recovery for environmental management, but safeguards are needed.

"We need to be sure charges represent the efficient cost of the service provided and avoid councils pushing bureaucratic waste on to farmers."

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