Govt’s high country policies criticised

Press, 11 September 1986, Page 2

Govt’s high country policies criticised

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

“The worst of both worlds” is how the Opposition spokesman on lands, Mr lan McLean (Nat., Tarawera), has described the Government’s decisions on the future of the high country. He said the Land Development and Management Corporation had a wholly commercial mission which would require it to make as much money as possible. Thus, the Government directive would force the corporation to make the

interests of the environment and of runholders secondary to its own need to make a profit. On the other hand, the Under-Secretary for the Environment, Mr Woollaston, had ruled out any freeholding of land held under pastoral lease from the Crown.

Important issues in the high country had to be resolved, Mr McLean said. As long as those issues of tenure, retirement, and access were unresolved, the high country had to be administered by a neutral agency.

The Ngai Tahu claim for the return of land to its rightful Maori owners made the need for a neutral agency even more pressing. The corporation had been told by the Government to be commercial, and so it could not be neutral. The new Conservation Department would be the advocate for conservation and so it could not be neutral either, Mr McLean said.

None of the key needs of the affected parties had been met by the Government’s decision.