Public Conservation Lands Rort

There is gunfire every night in the streets of the country’s largest city. 

The health system is on the verge of collapse. Somewhere around 40% of school pupils regularly play truant. Cabinet Ministers openly talk of replacing elected democracy with an apartheid regime. In the face of widespread opposition a law is pushed through the legislature seizing the water assets of local councils and handing them over to the governing party’s racially-selected mates. Mainstream news media are silenced with strings-attached public funding. High-ranking well-paid positions are given to family members of Cabinet Ministers. Supposedly independent and impartial judges take their instructions from government officials, and decide cases not by the law but by racial ideology. The government appoints an extremist anti-white bigot as co-leader of a new ‘violent extremism research centre’. 

The Third World? Well, look in the mirror, New Zealand. This is us. 

You may not, however, have heard of the public conservation land rort. 

The conservation estate, around one third of our country and perhaps our greatest treasure, is managed by the Department of Conservation. About one third of that, 9% of New Zealand, is currently classified as ‘stewardship land’. The name is something of an historical accident, but the term refers to land not yet given any higher classification ~ such as national park, national reserve, various sorts of other reserves or protected areas or even the lowly ‘conservation park’. Conservationists have long urged Ministers of Conservation and the Department to assess stewardship lands and give these areas, which include much absolutely wonderful country, the higher protective classifications they deserve. 

Below Glacial Speed

The Department, whose speed makes glaciers seem lively, has eventually begun the process. The first part of the country reviewed is Westland, from Karamea down to Haast. The deliberations have actually been made not by Departmental staff themselves but by a panel of ‘independent technical experts’, people with expertise in scientific fields, conservation, outdoor recreation and matauranga maori. That is all as it should be. Maori history and lore is certainly a valid consideration like all the others when making such big decisions.

And then, for obscure reasons involving the open-ended invocation of ‘Treaty principles’ in section 4 of the Conservation Act, which can justify absolutely anything, the Crown allowed itself to be bullied into adding a ‘mana whenua panel’, to represent the interests of the local tangata whenua, as well. Both panels, of  independent experts and local Maori, had to make draft recommendations. The public would make its views felt on the recommendations of the expert panel, and that panel and the Department would then in some obscure way refine the recommendations before sending them off to the Minister. The local mana whenua panel will also send its recommendations to the Minister. What will happen then? Your guess is as good as mine. The Minister will certainly have options. 

Before going any further, it bears repeating that despite its name, much of this West Coast stewardship land has both the most amazing natural, ecological and scientific values and also wonderful opportunities for outdoor recreation. 

The chair of the independent panel, Dr Jan Wright, a former Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment was forced by ill-health to resign from the panel in November last year, just as work began. Another panellist with expertise in outdoor recreation also had to resign. The Department ~ the Minister ~ did not bother to replace them. Such, presumably, is the respect that the Department holds for the interests they represent. 

Ngai Tahu Opposed

But that is only the tip of the iceberg. Ngai Tahu is not keen on national parks. This might surprise us. Who could possibly oppose national park status for our country’s most wonderful natural areas? And after all, in 1998 there was a ‘full and final settlement’ ~ yet another one ~ of Ngai Tahu’s eternal grudge. But the mana whenua panel has announced that Ngai Tahu ‘opposes all additions to national parks’ within its 1840 tribal boundaries ~ because they would ‘alienate Ngai Tahu from [their] ancestral lands’. This is, in effect, to renounce the full and final settlement. Ngai Tahu’s word is worthless. It is also to predetermine the reclassification issue even before the process has begun. The mana whenua panel is asked to consider future land status, and begins by excluding one such status, that of national park, from their list of possibilities. It would be surprising if they were keen on any other  high levels of protection. They are not the final decision makers, of course, but they are influential; and their attitude ignores the full and final settlement they signed not very long ago.

Ngai Tahu also dislikes national parks because the taking of native plants and animals is not allowed there. We might think that such a prohibition is fair enough. There should be somewhere in the country, surely, where native flora and fauna are safe from human predation. Cultural supplies can surely be sourced elsewhere. And if they are unavailable elsewhere, surely they are so rare that they should not be sourced anywhere?

And as it happens, rightly or wrongly, and perhaps to your surprise, some national park management plans do actually make provision for takings for Maori cultural purposes; although none for anyone else’s….

 So ~ Ngai Tahu is opposed to national park extensions. Ngai Tahu is not very keen on any higher levels of protection at all, and would prefer that stewardship land should either retain that status, or, if it were to receive a higher status, should receive as low a higher status as possible. As I say, this stance ab initio is surely enough of itself to deprive their recommendations of any respect. 

We should note here that the status of ‘conservation park’, does not, despite its name, offer much more protection than stewardship status does. Subject to the relevant planning documents, over which, of course, Ngai Tahu has significant influence, coal mines, gold mines, hydro-electric developments and who knows what else may be developed there….

The main panel of experts has openly acknowledged that it has been influenced by Ngai Tahu’s attitude. And what do you know? The expert panel’s final recommendations, when they surfaced several weeks ago, propose only a handful of additions to two national parks. They also propose giving some absolutely wonderful areas, entirely worthy of national park status, or national reserve (almost as good) or ecological or scientific reserve or wildlife management area (for areas of amazing natural values) only the lowly status of….conservation park. 

Wonderful Valley

The wonderful Waitaha Valley, for example, between Ross and Harihari, is destined for conservation park, which would allow hydro-electric generation. Several years ago Westpower applied for a ‘concession’ ~ the term used in the Conservation Act ~ for hydro-electric development in the Waitaha, and that application was declined by David Parker, the then Minister of Conservation, in 2019, specifically because of the valley’s natural beauty and wilderness qualities. But just a few days after the release of the current recommendations, the Greymouth Evening Star announced that a fresh application has been lodged, by a partnership of Westpower and….Ngai Tahu! To be exact, between Westpower and Arahura Holdings Ltd, the business entity of Ngai Tahu’s Ngati Waewae sub-tribe.

If the Waitaha does not deserve to be national park, then what area does? Yet the mana whenua panel had recommended that the land remain stewardship land ‘to allow for local community hydro aspirations’. Obviously influenced by this recommendation, the main panel has recommended merely that it become conservation park. 

The chair of the mana whenua panel is Mr Francois Tumahai, who is also the chair of …Ngati Waewae! And also the CEO of…Arahura Holdings. His wife, Lisa Tumahai, is also a director of Arahura Holdings, as well as the current chairperson of Ngai Tahu and the deputy Chair of the Climate Change Commission. Mr Tumahai is also on the West Coast Regional Council, Development West Coast, the Westland District Council, and also the current chair of the West Coast Conservation Board, where he has been prominent in frustrating the Board’s attempts to promote conservation. He and Mrs Tumahai are obviously busy people. So busy, in fact, that they did not declare, at the time the mana whenua panel made its recommendations, that Arahura Holdings was in partnership with Westpower. 

Conflicts of Interest

 In fairness, the Department did not oblige members of the mana whenua panel to declare any conflicts of interest. Members of the main panel were obliged to declare and manage possible conflicts, in accordance with the Auditor-General’s guidelines, but the Ngai Tahu members ~ the mana whenua panel ~ were not. The Department left it to that panel to sort out its own conflicts of interest ~ which it did by ignoring them. Perhaps that is the Te Tiriti way. Unless we are more careful than we have been, it will obviously be the way of the future. 

Both these panels, note well, are publicly funded. Mr Tumahai’s  input is paid for out of your taxes.

Even more insulting to accountability ~ and to conservation legislation, and to conservation itself ~ is the case of the Denniston Plateau, north of Westport. It has a rich and absolutely unique mix of native flora and fauna, including species that exist nowhere else in the world; it is an outstanding natural landscape with high conservation, recreation, historic and landscape values. There is of course coal under the plateau. Nevertheless, from a conservation point of view, the plateau deserves a very high level of protection. 

The stewardship area on the plateau does, however, adjoin a small block of land owned by Arahura Holdings Ltd. ~ which is, of course, 100% owned by Ngati Waewae. As the Department has long known, Arahura Holdings has publicly expressed its desire to allow Bathurst Resources Ltd to mine that block for coal, and thereby obtain access to the adjoining public conservation estate. (Bathurst attempted to purchase this private block some years ago, but was blocked by the Overseas Investment Act. Arahura Holdings purchased it instead, and has been working with Bathurst in attempting to allow mining ever since.) And so the mana whenua panel recommended that this area also remain as stewardship land. The national panel, obviously influenced by that recommendation, disagreed only slightly, recommending conservation park status ~ which would still allow mining. 

 And then we discover that Mr Tumahai, chair of the mana whenua panel and of Arahura Holdings, has been appointed a director of Bathurst Resources Ltd, on a salary of $90,000 a year. 

Corruption?

This is corruption. There is no other word for it. It may all be quite legal, but then corruption often is. This is what we expect in some shabby little African republic, where we read that the cousin of the president’s wife has just been appointed to the board of the big oil company that has been granted the drilling rights…..This is exactly the same thing. The chair of an influential government advisory panel influences decisions which would have the effect of enabling mining on public land, and he is also on the board of the mining company. In the case of the Waitaha Valley, the mana whenua panel directly advocated the hydro scheme in its recommendation. 

It is regrettable, but perhaps not all that surprising, to find such behaviour in private citizens, especially ones who have trumpeted their virtues and victimhood as much as Ngai Tahu. It is particularly disgraceful, though, that this corruption should be actively connived at and indeed promoted by a Department of State, the Department of Conservation, which was aware of Mr Tumahai’s longstanding sympathies with coal-mining and which engaged and paid Mr Tumahai out of public funds ~ and the national panel has been significantly influenced by his panel’s recommendations. We can obviously have little faith in the integrity of the Department’s decisions. It is just another of the Mickey Mouse outfits in charge everywhere these days. Presumably such corruption is considered to be the inevitable concomitant of the Department’s legal obligation to recognise ‘Treaty principles’. We have been warned.

There can be no guarantees, but it may be a good sign that the Conservation ministerial warrant changed hands in the recent Cabinet reshuffle. Kiri Allen has been replaced by Poto Williams. As Police Minister Ms Williams was blamed unfairly for her response to Auckland gang warfare and ram raids, which are problems long in the making and to which there are no quick and easy answers.  Her arrival in conservation provides an opportunity to review and reset the whole reclassification process.  

Media AWOL

Of perhaps wider significance is that this whole disgraceful affair has also been largely ignored by the mainstream news media ~ many of which have happily accepted funds from the ‘Public Interest Journalism Fund’, which is administered by New Zealand on Air and which requires active promotion of the government’s take on ‘Treaty principles’. These principles now evidently include acceptance that conservation statutes are more wishlists than actual law, and that conflicts of interest do not matter if you are Maori.

 There is more to be angry about. Even though there was a full and final settlement of the Ngai Tahu claim in 1998, the national panel is recommending handing over 180,000 hectares of the public conservation estate in central Westland~ about 450,000 acres ~ to Ngai Tahu as an ‘historic reserve’ which they would administer. Under the Reserves Act no camping or campfires are allowed in reserves, and public access is at the managing board’s discretion.

 This proposed reserve also contains numerous opportunities for hydro-electric generation, and that would be permissible in such a reserve ~ where, incidentally, there are no physical historic remains actually requiring reserve protection. In fact, as the Department is well aware, one such hydro project is being pursued in the reserve right now, at Griffin Creek, the site of perhaps the country’s best canyoning experience. If that land were to be vested in a Ngai Tahu historic reserve board that board might well be able to profit from the venture .   

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is the age-old question. Who shall guard the guardians themselves? Guardianship by an inept Department and a corrupted news media is obviously inadequate. It is time for a shakeup.