Word of the day

Festination – an involuntary quickening of gait, as in some persons with Parkinson’s disease.

Woman of the day

Woman of the Day soldier Hannah Snell born OTD 1723 in Worcester who disguised herself as a man and joined the 6th Regiment of Foot. She took part in the capture of Pondicherry and fought in the Battle of Devicotta during the War of Austrian Succession.

Neighbours in Worcester… pic.twitter.com/teM0nL2hzH

— The Attagirls (@TheAttagirls) April 23, 2024

RMA changes end war on farming

The government is making urgent and much-needed changes to the Resource Management Act:

RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment Bill which will make urgent changes to the resource management system.

“RM Bill 1 focuses on targeted changes that can take effect quickly and give certainty to councils and consent applicants, while new legislation to replace the RMA is developed,” Mr Bishop says.

“This Bill will reduce the regulatory burden on resource consent applicants and support development in key sectors, including farming, mining and other primary industries. These sectors are critical to rebuilding the New Zealand economy.”

“The Bill will also speed up and simplify the process to make or amend National Direction which is currently unnecessarily onerous, costly, and takes too long.”

Five changes will be included in the Bill, these will:

• Make it clear that, while the NPS-FM is being reviewed and replaced, resource consent applicants no longer need to demonstrate their proposed activities follow the Te Mana o te Wai hierarchy of obligations, as set out in the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management (NPS-FM).
• Amend stock exclusion regulations in relation to sloped land.
• Repeal intensive winter grazing regulations.
• Align the consenting pathway for coal mining with the pathway for other mining activities in the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity (NPS-IB), NPS-FM, and the National Environmental Standards for Freshwater (NES-F).
• Suspend the NPS-IB requirement for councils to identify new Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) for three years.

Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says improving primary sector profitability is key to boosting our largest exporting sector. Regulations need to be fit for purpose and not place unnecessary costs on farmers and growers.

“Removing the need for resource consent applicants to demonstrate that their activities follow the hierarchy of obligations will better reflect the interests of all water users,” Mr McClay says.

“Cabinet has agreed changes to stock exclusion and winter grazing regulations representing a move to a more risk-based, catchment-focussed approach.

“We’re proposing to remove the problematic and contentious low slope map and for regional councils and farmers to determine where stock need to be excluded, based on risk. The focus is on farm-level and regionally suitable solutions. This will reduce costs for farmers.

“Importantly, effective non-regulatory measures are already in place to support the continued improvement of winter grazing practices going forward. Sector groups have confirmed their continued and collective commitment to work alongside farmers and regional councils to ensure good outcomes.”

“Regional councils tell us there have been significant improvements in winter grazing practices, with farmers changing where they plant fodder crops and how they manage winter grazing. The national requirement for farmers to obtain prescriptive and expensive winter grazing consents is being removed in time for the 2025 season, and instead being managed through good practice and regional council plans,” Mr McClay says.

Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard says freshwater farm plans will enable farmers and growers to find the right solutions for their farm and catchment.

“Property and catchment specific farm plans make sense because they can be used to identify environmental risks and plan practical on-farm actions to manage those risks,” Mr Hoggard says.

“Sector groups and farmers have told us the current system is too complex, so the Government is working at pace to simplify and improve the freshwater farm plan system.

“We have heard that many in the sector would like existing environmental programmes, including farm environment plans and industry assurance programmes, to be integrated with the freshwater farm plan system.”

The freshwater farm plan roll-out began in Southland and Waikato in 2023 and expanded to areas of the West Coast, Otago, and Manawatū/Whanganui earlier this year.

“The first RMA Bill will also give effect to the previously announced changes to suspend the identification of new SNAs through the NPS-IB for a period of three years.

“The criteria for identifying new significant natural areas within the NPS-IB were an attempt to provide a standard approach to identifying the most important areas of biodiversity.

“However, there are concerns less significant areas are being captured and this can place too much restriction on how land is used.” Mr Hoggard says.

RM Bill 1 is expected to be introduced to Parliament in May and passed into law later in this year.

Federated Farmers welcomes the repeal of anti-farming legislation:

Federated Farmers are welcoming today’s repeal of the Natural and Built Environment Act and Spatial Planning Act.

“This was one of Federated Farmers’ 12 key policy priorities for restoring farmer confidence, so we’re really pleased to see the new Government have made it a priority,” Feds RMA reform spokesperson Mark Hooper says.

“Farmers have been crying out for reform of our cumbersome resource management laws for decades, but those reforms needed to be done right. “Unfortunately, Labour’s reform programme completely missed the mark.

“Instead of offering more certainty and making life easier for New Zealanders, they were going to deliver the exact opposite – complexity, cost, and uncertainty.”

Hooper says Labour’s model of unelected regional planning committees would have moved decision-making further away from local communities and reduced democratic accountability in our planning system.

Federated Farmers also had serious concerns about vague new concepts that were being introduced that would have led to years of needless and expensive litigation through the courts.

“Today’s repeal is a positive step forward, but its very much a case of the job only being half done.

“The new Government now need to get to work drafting a replacement that will reduce cost and complexity in the planning system, and empower local democracy.

“Federated Farmers are urging the new Government to start work on replacement legislation early in the new year.

“It’s important reform is progressed at pace so new legislation can be introduced this parliamentary term,” Hooper concluded.  . . 

For six years farmers felt the government was waging war on them and their industry the these changes put an end to that:

Today’s changes to unworkable and expensive regulations mark the end of the war on farming, says Federated Farmers freshwater spokesperson Colin Hurst.

“These impractical rules have been a complete nightmare since the day they were introduced and farmers will be pleased to see the back of them,” Hurst says.

“They were rushed through before the 2020 election by overzealous regulators with a complete disregard for those who would actually need to implement them behind the farm gate.

“Farmers are always looking to improve environmental outcomes on their properties and to care for the land, but regulation needs to be practical, pragmatic and affordable.

“These rules failed on all three counts. They were completely disconnected from the reality of farming, devoid of all common sense, and heaped on a tonne of unnecessary costs for farmers.”

Hurst says farming rules were so poorly thought through they had to be amended eight times in just three years, and even then they remained totally unworkable and confusing for farmers.

“The constant chopping and changing has been incredibly confusing and has completely undermined farmers’ confidence to invest in their businesses,” Hurst says.

“The previous Government should have listened when farmers told them a one-size-fits-all approach was never going to work. It’s like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.”

Winter grazing rules would have required over 10,000 farmers around the country to get a resource consent just to feed a winter crop to their stock.

“Even if farmers had complied, the councils wouldn’t have had the capacity to process that number of consents.”

Hurst is also deeply critical of flawed stock exclusion rules that currently require extensive sheep and beef properties to fence their waterways by July 2025.

“Fencing streams on extensive properties with low stocking rates has the potential to cost farmers hundreds of thousands of dollars, for very little environmental gain,” Hurst says.

“It makes no sense to have a blanket rule requiring fences on these vast properties with difficult terrain and a very low stocking rate.

“The previous Government had two attempts at mapping out where sheep and beef farmers needed to fence streams, and they still couldn’t get it right.

“Fences don’t go up overnight, so the reality is that those farmers couldn’t comply with the current rules by July next year, even if they wanted to.

“Farmers are New Zealand’s leading conservationists. I can’t think of any group of people who are doing more to protect and enhance our countries biodiversity.

“We need to be empowering farmers and supporting them to make further improvements on their properties instead of tying them up in needless red tape.”

Federated Farmers strongly believe that winter grazing, stock exclusion and on-farm biodiversity can be better managed through the upcoming rollout of farm plans.

“Farm plans allow farmers and rural communities to tailor their environmental improvement actions to match their specific local needs,” Hurst says.

“This will always lead to much better outcomes, and more community buy-in, than impractical and expensive one-size-fits-all rules driven out of Wellington.”

These measures put the balance back into sustainability by taking into account economic and social considerations as well as environmental ones.

That balance maintains environmental protections without imposing unnecessary and unworkable regulations on farmers.