Take me to the river
Jim Anderton has today resurrected the Land Access issue, saying that he has no preconceived idea as to how it should be achieved, but that some sort of deal must be done. However, his options may be limited because the Government’s deal with UF(O) reportedly says only non-statutory solutions can be considered to resolve the issue.
Which means that after all the fuss and bother the whole debate is circling back to the solutions the Greens have consistently advocated.
Like Labour and Anderton’s Progressives, the Greens support the principle that the public must have access to their waterways, but Jeanette has always maintained that a unilateral law change that effectively confiscates land off farmers is only going to create conflict. Announcing the Greens’ position last November, she said:
“The days when New Zealanders enjoyed a shared culture in favour of public access seem to have gone. Landowners are afraid of crime and interference with stock. People who want to enjoy traditional access to the great outdoors to tramp, fish and mountain bike are seeing more doors closed to them. We need to find a process for negotiation and conflict resolution to restore both access and trust.”
Shortly after she said that, the Government adopted the Greens’ new policy of appointing an Access Commissioner to, among other things, negotiate public access to waterways on a case-by-case basis.
And as Jeanette said in June this year, a lot of the specific disputes around the country between local communities being denied access to their rivers and beaches by (often new) land owners could be resolved by having the existing legal arrangements actually honoured, which in most cases means properly enforcing paper roads.
It is worth noting that, in even contemplating a legal universal ‘right to roam’, Labour started off some way to the left of the Greens on this issue…
October 30th, 2005 at 9:56 am
Frog, I think you’ve misinterpretted both Radio NZ (and they in turn have misinterpretted the agreement) and the Labour/UFNZ Coalition agreement.
The appropriate quote from the Labour/UFNZ agreement is:
“non-statutory proposals to negotiate improved public access along rivers lakes and foreshore will be progressed.”
This is substantially less restrictive on Government action than something like:
“they will not support any legislative initiatives to decriminalise the recreational use of cannabis.”
I do not believe considering a law would on land access would cause Labour to breach its agreement with UFNZ, that would only happen if they didn’t (also) try non-statutory means. If you think about it, any means that involves the spending of money (which most non-statutory means would) will require an appropriation from Parliament, which is made in the budget, which is a statute…
October 30th, 2005 at 2:30 pm
How does this square with the quite legitimate concerns over spread of such invasive organisms as didymo (’rock snot’ weed) which may require less access to be granted to waterways (or maybe more controlled access), in order to stop it from spreading right around the country this summer as recreational fisherfolk leave their day-jobs for a few weeks fishin’n'travellin’.
I’m a huge fan of the “commons” approach to understanding the public use of waterways, and grew up with access to public reserves in many parts of the country, visited whenever my family stayed with far-flung cousins; this is a not uncommom experience for my generation, but it’s becoming increasingly rare for my children’s generation.
I don’t think that UFO’s attempt to find quasi-legal means of bludgeoning locals into opening their private property for city folk to cross in order to gain beach/river access is the best way around the situation; I’m pretty sure that if I rocked up to Peter Dunne’s Khandallah address, and pushed for the right to cross his land on my way to tramp Mt Kaukau, he’d have nothing to do with negotiating, & simply set the dogs on me.
Yet this is the level at which UFO seem to argue they should have rights to cross the countryside in wild and windswept places far from their comfy city homes.
October 30th, 2005 at 6:47 pm
I don’t get this… Why do farmers who own thousands of acres get to be annoyed when I just want to walk through a little bit of their land to get to the beach?? I lived up in the Waitakeres as a young boy on a 12 acre farm. Our neighbour had 1000 acres and it was the quickest way to get down to Bethells beach. We used to cross his land on a regular basis, politely and without bothering any animals and so forth. Anyway its a bit ridiculous to have a society when one person can own thousands of acres (largely through historical accident) and another person can’t afford a single square foot. I could understand not wanting people to walk through your backyard and peek into your window, but if you have a vast swathe of land, then you have an extra duty on your shoulders — huge holdings don’t come without responsibility. Half of the farming land in New Zealand should be repatriated with native forest anyway. We overproduce primary produce in NZ — if we want to get serious about the future we need to start exporting smart ideas and software rather than animal flesh and apples. Especially considering the environmental impact of shipping low value goods like primary produce all the way to Europe. Frankly its a ridiculous state of affairs.
October 30th, 2005 at 9:34 pm
Alexei;
I completely understand your confusion, as a neighbour you were probably quite responsible about how you crossed the land of the farmer bordering your family’s home.
The fact is that a lot of folk haven’t got that kind of respect for stock, land and waterways, and leave gates open, let dogs in amongst stock, or start fires while camping (unpermitted), all of which are actions that can cause harm under the right (or wrong) circumstances.
I agree that farming these days is more of a traditional lifestyle choice than a truly commercial venture for many; where I spent my childhood,many of the sheepfarms have become timber stands on 25 year leases to Japanese companies, which pay the families for the use of the land that had become only marginally productive for sheep. Other farming families are becoming smarter, diversifying into new forms of agriculture or stock management, in order to create value-added product.
That still leaves farming families who have a strong emotional connection to the place in which they live, and a strong distrust of outsiders who don’t understand rural issues, and only travel through looking for a quick country fix once a year (I’m included in that, I barely get away from the city now)
If you can find a beach on a map, with a road running near it, you can usually find a residence nearby. Stop, introduce yourself, be polite and friendly, and most folk will be friendly in return.
Ask nicely for the best way to access to the coastline, and you may find out that last summer someone set the hay on fire from a car backfire, or something like that, and they just want people to be more careful, maybe staying away from dry paddocks (farmers often don’t have much in the way of fire-fighting water, maybe a dam or duckpond, which is really needed for stock watering in dry seasons)
It’s just little things that make a difference, but those little details can create a whole lot of difference in the lives of the people who live in isolated places, when things go wrong.
I respectfully suggest that we do still have a job to do in NZ with primary prooduce, too, but not in the way you discussed. We have a prime opportunity to add value through producing organic food at premium for the markets of Europe and North America, not to mention Japan; and for software development to continue to grow as an industry, someone’s got to be growing the food that we eat locally, too. It doesn’t just magically appear in the supermarket in response to your pay hitting your bank account!! So there’s a place for primary producers, manufacturing and tertiary/service industries to exist all at the same time, we just need to respect the ocntribution each player makes.
katie
October 30th, 2005 at 11:42 pm
Katie,
I suspect you are possibly right about the “weekend warrior” syndrome where city folk run around on the weekends creating havoc (sadly I am a city-dweller myself now).
In terms of primary produce — yes we should grow our own primary produce of course — but feeding New Zealand is not that hard — there are only 4 million of us. What I object to is burning jet fuel and whatever to fly lamb all over the planet, as if sheep don’t grow anywhere else. Totally crazy. If we want to continue this ridiculous behaviour we should at least include the environmental cost of the shipping in some form of (non-trivial) carbon tax. Naturally if we start taxing exports (or Europe starts taxing imports) based on environmental considerations then primary produce will become largely restricted to the local (pacific) market - as it should be, and we will start exporting more high value, small volume commodities like software and smart ideas to the northern hemisphere as close-to-zero environmental cost. Its only sensible. What I really dislike is that NZ has this clean green image, but in terms of per-person behaviour we are near the bottom of the OECD in terms of environmental-friendliness. The only reason NZ is still a nice place to live is because we have a very small population compared to places like England and we (European New Zealanders) haven’t had as much time to ruin the place as the Brits and Americans have had in their countries…
October 31st, 2005 at 12:31 am
I reject the term “our” rivers etc. and the intention behind it as is used in the post. That is a foreign concept no matter how you want to dress it up as some myth of being traditional. “Our” foreshore, swamps, lakes, mountains, hills, plains, valleys etc. “Our” housing stock, cars, etc… The whole idea of arbitrary designation of natural features as inherently public is slippery and weak as well as historically unfounded. The government has stolen enough land in this country.
However, I agree that a non-legislative solution and going case-by-case is the only viable option. To turn private into public means consultation, negotiation and compensation, ie. the opposite of the Foreshore & Seabed Act. Note also the different treatment from the government when the property interests are predominantly Pakeha.
October 31st, 2005 at 1:06 pm
In many countries uncultivated land is open to all for recreation. This doesn’t stop farming - practically all the UK Lake District is sheep farms, most of the Alps are summer pastures for cattle, many overseas forests are fully accessible outside the one year in a hundred that they need felling.
I don’t see why NZ should be any different. It’s no more confiscation to make a farmer allow access than to make a city dweller pay income tax.
It strikes me that ownership and access are two different things - I’m all for Maori ownership of foreshore and seabed, but I think that barring things like container wharfs, there should be a presumption of public access to a coastal and riverside strip. (It was always assumed that we had this, but never actually legislated).
This land *is* our land!