_13 August 2009

Forest & Bird media release for immediate use

Millions of dollars at stake if Crown doesn’t appeal high country land decision

The Crown risks losing millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money if it does not seek a higher court ruling on whether the value of landscapes and views should be included in high country rents, Forest & Bird says.

In July the Otago Land Valuation Tribunal ruled that amenity values (the values added by factors such as landscape views and lakeside locations) should not be considered when setting the value of rents of pastoral leases.

The tribunal’s ruling was made when the leaseholder of Minaret Station, on the shores of Lake Wanaka in Otago, sought a ruling on whether those values should be considered when setting rentals on the Crown-owned high country pastoral lease.

Forest & Bird Advocacy Manager Kevin Hackwell says the Government should now appeal that ruling, or risk losing millions of dollars which should go to taxpayers. The deadline for an appeal to be lodged is tomorrow (Friday).

“This ruling severely reduces the extent of public ownership of the high country; in effect it will mean that the Government will end up handing over millions of dollars of public money to private interests,” Kevin Hackwell says.

The tribunal considered that high country amenity values such as views and lakeside location are “improvements” belonging to the leaseholder, rather than the Crown, which owns the underlying land.

Kevin Hackwell says the implications of the tribunal’s decision are significant.

“The Crown’s share of ownership of hundreds of thousands of hectares of high country tussock grasslands, mountains, valley floors and river and lake margins will be severely reduced if this decision is not challenged.”

He says the Government’s ability to protect conservation and public interest values through the process of tenure reviews will be greatly reduced. Under tenure review, some parts of former pastoral leases are protected for conservation and recreation, while other parts go into private ownership of farmers. If the tribunal’s decision is applied to tenure review deals, the Government will be forced to pay millions of dollars more for the conservation land.

Who owns what in the high country has been at the heart of decades of debate and needs to be resolved by the courts, Kevin Hackwell says. A number of rulings made by the tribunal have been overturned by the High Court, and this ruling is of such magnitude that it should be challenged at this higher level.

ENDS

© Scoop Media