Fish & Game dumps ‘talkfest’

Fish and Game NZ has resigned from the forum and would now rather work more directly with industry, Johnson says.

"We think it has essentially become a process loaded in favour of agricultural intensification and irrigation expansion, and not enough attention has been given to the primacy of the natural environment first," he told Dairy News.

Its decision to resign is based on growing frustration for some time.

"The forum has produced three reports, and is about to produce its fourth report. The Government has had 156 recommendations from the first three reports and there are another 160-odd in the report going up this week or next week. That's 200 recommendations. There is no implementation plan for that.

"We were told by [Conservation Minister] Nick Smith at the beginning that the Government wanted an outcome that would resonate with middle New Zealand – I think that is the language he used.

"There has been no communications plan to take that to the public and we have felt we wanted to be able to do our own thing in accordance with our own statutory role.

"We just got frustrated – it has become a bit of a talk fest."

Johnson says papers arrive 48 hours before meetings, always very technical and in large quantities. Some technical papers arrive on meeting days and no minutes of meetings are provided to participants.

"So you take part in these processes and develop opinions on these very complex issues [but] you are never quite sure how they have been received."

He says there is a protocol that discourages participants from speaking out in the public arena or lobbying government outside the process.

"We thought it inappropriate that as a statutory body we should have our role and our ability to do the job fated by an ad hoc and informal protocol."

Johnson says they have given it five years, having been involved in the process from the outset.

He says the idea of the collaborative process was brought back from Nordic countries where the governments had said that if all the competing interests on an issue could agree the government would commit to implement it.

"In those cases you take part in the process knowing there is a real purpose and a real potential benefit in putting effort into it.

"What has happened in New Zealand is the Government has embraced the term collaborative governance but they have split it in two. They have set up all these collaborative processes but they have retained all decision making and the discretion for the decision making for themselves. What it means is all the outcomes of the Land and Water Forum have only been recommendations.

"There has been no certainty they would be implemented. It has bastardised the process."