Horticulture New Zealand wanted the court to look at new economic evidence produced for MPI by Landcare Research. This report showed the economic impact of One Plan on the region’s farmers was far greater than Horizons had originally stated.
The regional council has been criticised by government ministers for failing to provide quality economic data in the One Plan.
Andrew Hoggard, Federated Farmers Manawatu/Rangitikei president, who has spent many hours making submissions on One Plan, says he’s disappointed the Environment Court will not hear new evidence. He disputes the judge’s assertion that the MPI evidence was not important enough and the Horizons submission was seen as ‘neutral’.
“The court has got it wrong,” Hoggard says, pointing out that the One Plan is complex and that the task of assembling appropriate evidence has taken a long time. Some evidence in the recent MPI report “turns the previous stuff on its head,” he says.
“The work done would have shed a completely new light on this plan and it should have been considered by the Environment Court. But there is still a lot of water to go under the bridge because the council still has to adopt it. So hopefully things will change.”
Hoggard believes that up to 90% of farmers in Tararua District will require discretionary consents to farm, given the way the present One Plan is set. He says the discretionary consents clause in the plan was designed to deal with unique and unusual situations, not the majority of farms.
Also concerning him is that legal submission made to the Environment Court by Horizons did not accurately reflect the views of councillors. Rural News has seen the resolution passed by the council’s strategy committee which stated, “The committee supports in principle an application to the Environment Court for further economic analysis of the interim [Environment] Court decision in relation to the One Plan.”
At this point there is confusion about what happened to this resolution – whether it was passed, rejected or amended. But councillor Murray Guy, who moved the original motion at the strategy committee meeting, says he was happy with the eventual outcome. Other councillors say they were told by staff at the meeting that they couldn’t support the Horticulture NZ application. As a result, they went along with a submission to the Environment Court – which does not contain the words “support in principle” for the review.
Hort NZ’s Chris Keenan is disappointed, but not surprised, the Environment Court has rejected the lobby’s request to hear the additional evidence. He believes if it had considered the evidence it would have resulted in a better One Plan.
