‘A lot of action quite quickly’: How the Government won over the farm lobby

Saturday, 21 December 2024

Hundreds of pages of emails show farming groups have been in regular contact with Government ministers, pressing for changes to environmental rules. In some cases, the lobbying was followed by Government action. CHARLIE MITCHELL reports.

Hours after the new coalition Government announced a roadmap for its first 100 days, a minister received a text message.

“Nothing in first hundred days on freshwater?”

The text’s recipient was Andrew Hoggard, a first-term ACT MP, former Federated Farmers president, and now associate agriculture minister. The sender was Federated Farmers’ head of advocacy.

It is one of many communications between the rural sector and the Government in its first year, according to hundreds of pages of documents released to Greenpeace and provided to The Press.

The text message highlighted the high expectations of the new Government, which had promised to overhaul freshwater rules to be less onerous on farmers.

While each coalition party had signalled changes to freshwater rules, the exact policies in mind were not always clear, nor was the level of urgency. Just how the first year would play out was not certain.

Any worries soon faded. Industry groups made regular contact with the Government, ranging from policy briefings to public relations advice, and often found specific policy requests later reflected in law.

Exactly one year after the text message was sent, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon went on a “Restoring Farmer Confidence Tour” hosted by Federated Farmers, a public celebration of the work his Government had done.

It is unclear what effect, if any, lobbying had on some decisions. Some requests have not been taken up, and the coalition parties had long pledged to cut red tape for farmers.

But while it is not unusual for industry groups to press their case with the Government of the day, the speed at which some specific requests have ended up in law has been notable.

Among the most consequential is a recent amendment stopping regional councils from passing new freshwater rules, a move some local officials said undermined local democracy.

It has prevented at least three regional councils — Otago, Canterbury and Southland — from passing plans criticised by farming groups for being too hard on the sector. The change followed repeated requests from farming leaders.

Other moves appear to have been rushed. A joint-industry push to legislate over a court ruling was hurried into law, added to a bill after the public consultation period. An announcement about another change lobbied for by farming groups was denounced as potentially illegal by legal experts.

Greenpeace, which obtained the documents, said they showed the closeness of the sector to the Government.

“Agribusiness has been handed a golden ticket to continue polluting, and they’re using it,” freshwater campaigner Will Appelbe said.

“Anyone who is worried about their drinking water or the state of their rivers should be asking the prime minister to explain.”

The beginning

The messaging was clear from the start.

On November 16, 2023, a week before coalition negotiations finished, a senior Beef + Lamb staffer emailed Hoggard.

“The policy issue that is top of mind for farmers at the moment is the freshwater rules…” the email said.

“Given what has been happening we would be very keen to see the new Government ask regional councils to pause their processes and for a review to be undertaken of the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management (NPS-FM).”

The NPS-FM passed under the previous Government imposed stricter bottom lines for water quality. All regional councils needed plans for meeting those bottom lines before the end of 2024.

All three coalition parties in the new Government had pledged to replace the NPS-FM, but none had a policy to stop councils from passing plans ahead of a replacement. As one industry figure later described it, the coalition parties were “relatively quiet on this direction”.

Some farmers feared a new NPS-FM would be pointless if councils locked in stricter rules before it passed.

Pleas for an intervention became frequent in the Government’s first year. In early December, Dairy NZ’s chairperson and chief executive emailed Agriculture Minister Todd McClay laying out five “critical matters” for the sector.

The first was that “clear direction needs to be given to regional councils to delay their current freshwater plans”, the email said, using bolded type for emphasis.

But of the industry groups, Federated Farmers was the most assertive. In early December, it sent a lengthy briefing to McClay and Environment Minister Penny Simmonds titled “Changes needed to Freshwater rules”.

Simply delaying the time frame for councils to pass plans was not good enough, it said. The NPS-FM had to be repealed urgently to “halt the stream of regional councils releasing new draft regional plans.”

“Letting this process run over the next three years will mean continual news stories covering the draconian nature of these plans,” it said.

“To avoid a constant stream of such news, and the poor farmer confidence this would drive, we recommend repealing the NPS-FM right away and sending a signal to councils to stop work on these regulations.”

The briefing had a host of other requests, and even advice on political messaging. It acknowledged “political concerns” about the “optics of repealing freshwater rules” and suggested possible arguments for change, including that farmers are being “forced to farm by consent” and are “being told how to farm from Wellington”.

By the end of December 2023, the Government announced it would extend the deadline for councils to pass plans from 2024 to 2027, but it did not repeal the NPS-FM as requested.

That would, however, not be the final action on the matter.

A ‘high-trust model’

While the national bottom-lines were a concern for the industry, they were not the only problem.

The previous Government had introduced a scheme requiring every farm over 20 hectares to have a “freshwater farm plan”, which for each property would map and describe threats to freshwater and ways to mitigate them.

The plans would be phased in from early 2025, starting with Waikato and Southland, followed by the rest of the country. The idea was that, over time, the plans could be used as a substitute for some resource consents.

The industry’s views were mixed. It had initially promoted the idea as a step towards self-regulation, making farmers less subject to blanket rules. Thousands of farmers voluntarily have farm plans complying with industry standards, led through companies such as Fonterra.

But the industry soured on the idea once the Government got involved.

Under the Government scheme, all farmers would need a regularly audited farm plan, regardless of whether the farm was high-risk or low-risk. Many would still need resource consents, effectively adding another layer of bureaucracy. Regional councils would decide who could certify or audit a farm plan, meaning existing industry-led plans may not be allowed.

It was not what the industry envisaged. Among its priorities for the new Government was delaying the roll-out, hoping the new Government would overhaul the scheme to more closely align with the sector’s wishes.

In the first week of March, the three industry groups (Beef + Lamb, Dairy NZ, and Federated Farmers) each sent a briefing to ministers outlining their position. Dairy NZ and Federated Farmers described “immediate legislative and regulatory changes” required to improve the scheme.

Those changes would move the farm plans to a “high-trust” model where the industry would take “a leading role in the design and implementation of tools to support the development and roll-out of farm plans”, the briefing said.

Beef & Lamb’s briefing made similar points. It urged upcoming requirements for farm plans be “withdrawn as a matter of urgency” so the scheme could be revised.

A month later, the Government delivered. McClay and Hoggard announced the freshwater farm plan scheme would be revised to be “more cost-effective and practical for farmers”, and the Government “may look into whether current requirements to complete a freshwater farm plan could be paused”.

The latter point was confirmed in September; all incoming requirements to have a farm plan were paused, just as the industry had requested.

“We have heard the concerns of the sector and Cabinet has agreed to pause the roll-out of freshwater farm plans while potential changes are considered,” Hoggard said.

One such change was included in a bill introduced to Parliament last week.

Rather than regional councils deciding who could audit a farm plan, the minister for the environment would decide — a suggestion that had come from Fonterra, a Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) prepared by officials noted.

The RIS also gave a clue to the speed of the changes. The officials’ analysis was limited by “the pace of reform”, which limited “the identification of options, level of analysis, collation, and review of evidence”, it said.

A matter of urgency

All of this was promising for the sector, as were a host of other changes that had been made at rapid speed: The so-called “ute-tax” repeal, a review of methane targets, and the withdrawal of stock exclusion and winter grazing rules.

Some were more consequential.

Early this year, Federated Farmers sent a letter to the ministers about the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity (NPS-IB) passed under the previous Government.

It required councils to identify and protect significant natural areas (SNAs), including those on private land, by 2028, with the aim of no net-loss to indigenous biodiversity.

Some farmers had raised “significant concerns” about the breadth of SNAs being identified, the letter said. It asked the Government to take “urgent measures” to halt the implementation of new SNAs.

Weeks later, Hoggard said in a press release that councils should stop work on identifying SNAs — a statement legal experts said appeared to be illegal given the law was still in effect.

Hoggard later clarified the comment. A requirement for councils to identify SNAs has now been (legally) delayed by three years.

With no time to rest, the Government was again asked by the agriculture sector to move quickly.

A court ruling early this year had threatened a major pillar of environmental regulation: Namely, the way regional councils treated diffuse pollution (eg nitrogen from farms slowly entering the environment) differently to point source pollution (like a big pipe pouring waste into a river).

The Resource Management Act (RMA) prevents pollution if it would have “significant adverse effects on aquatic life”; a rule councils applied stringently to point-source pollution, but not to diffuse pollution.

The logic was that councils wanted to fix freshwater quality over time, using resource consent conditions to drive improvements. If the rule applied to diffuse pollution, any activity that immediately contributed to freshwater pollution — say, a farm in an area with polluted rivers, like much of Canterbury — would be forbidden.

The courts ruled the council approach was wrong — the law applied to diffuse pollution, whether they liked it or not.

This was an obvious problem for farmers. In late April, the three industry groups sent a joint request to the Government asking it to legislate over the court ruling.

“[The ruling] creates a regulatory roadblock that no farm or farmer can pass through,” it said.

“This would lead to the loss of pastoral farming and associated rural communities in parts of Aotearoa/New Zealand.”

Also lobbying for the change was regional council Environment Canterbury (ECan).

Once again, the ministers were receptive. The change was slipped into a law during the select committee process, after public consultation. The minister responsible, Chris Bishop, acknowledged the process was “not ideal” but was driven by a sense of urgency.

Despite this clear willingness to move quickly, by mid-October, the issue of councils passing new water rules remained unresolved.

Of most concern was Otago, which for many years had been working on a freshwater plan that would have severe consequences for some farmers while delivering significant improvements to water quality.

For the first time in years, the council had a majority willing to pass the plan.

With many earlier requests yet to be heeded, the industry’s pleas for Government intervention became more direct.

In a September letter addressed to Simmonds, Federated Farmers vice president Colin Hurst said “urgent action” was needed to stop councils from passing new freshwater rules.

“Your Government was elected on a platform of unwinding unworkable freshwater rules and reducing agricultural red tape,” he wrote.

“Federated Farmers believes it is now urgent that legislative action is taken to prevent councils from notifying these plan changes.

“We recommend that you should insert an amendment to section 80A of the RMA to suspend the power of regional councils to notify freshwater planning instruments until new national direction is in place.”

Six weeks later, days before the Otago Regional Council was due to vote, the Government moved.

It amended section 80A of the RMA, suspending the power of councils to notify plans before new standards were introduced — precisely what Federated Farmers had asked.

It was the final, most significant victory for the sector in a year of quick and effective action.

To celebrate the first year, Federated Farmers hosted events with Luxon and McClay around New Zealand, aiming to restore farmer confidence.

“[I]t’s great to see so many of the ideas we put forward have been picked up by the coalition government,” Federated Farmers president Wayne Langford told Farmers Weekly.

“We’ve seen a lot of action quite quickly on those really big issues that have a material effect on a farmer’s business and confidence to make longer-term investment decisions.”