Foreign owner fights access to NZ farm

Can you go straight to the Supreme Court? Going by what I've seen from some other legal actions, I thought you'd have to start at a District Court, then the High Court, then the Court of Appeal (and either side can progress things to the next stage if it wants to challenge a loss), and after that I thought the Supreme Court only picks and chooses cases which it thinks are very important according to set criteria or have a significant chance of being overturned.

Probably not but the attempt would scare the offender

related article. Not all bad news https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/105025491/overseas-investors-pull-out-of-farm-purchases-after-government-clampdown

Good news? So fewer farms will be going through OIO and we (WAC) will get fewer chances to negotiate for access easements & covenants to be put in as conditions of the sale. Not sure that's good news for trampers/hunters, no. I'd prefer news that WAC's submissions are listened to & enforced.

I've parked on this farm and walked that track to Kawakawa hut. This was a couple years ago. The farm manager didn't look happy. Mainly because I had a dog. I assured him she wasn't a hunting dog which was his concern. It's a lovely easy walk. It would be a pity to lose it.

Yes ... the whole area is greatly underrated. The weather is quite different to the Tararua's and the terrain generally a lot dryer. Although it can be just as damned windy! The dozen or so trips I've done into the Aorangi area were all quite memorable and worthwhile. But it has to be said that overall the entire park suffers from neglect and a general sense of 'low priority'. And I can sort of understand why; it lacks the profile and prominence of the nearby Tararua/Rimutaka parks, and far fewer people make the effort to get there. I'm not surprised the new owners thought they might get away with this; from where they stood it looked like not many people really cared much about the place. They're wrong, we do care ... but we have to make that visible to them.

"Good news? So fewer farms will be going through OIO and we (WAC) will get fewer chances to negotiate for access easements & covenants to be put in as conditions of the sale." I didnt say good news I said not all bad. You are correct in that only oia affected sales are coming to the attention of WAC but at the same time its overseas buyers that are mainly the ones blocking access. A NZ owner wouldnt remove an existing access without a good reason but overseas buyers dont always understand this. Long term the sale of all property adjacent to public land should get sign off from WAC which would trigger a lot more access opportunities.However the bucket of worms includes the question of who pays and what happens in a dispute. I wonder if we can force a 2 meter wide strip on every farm boundary for access. Nice thought but it wont happen

@geeves Long and complex history, but the short version is blame the ACT Party who succeeded in scuttling Public Access reforms that Labour was attempting to push through in around 2005. They ran a despicable smear campaign, based on outright lies and manipulation to scam up enough public outrage to stall any reforms for a generation. It's something I'm still pissed off about all these years later. National of course were cosily playing along in the background, cynically using ACT as their attack dog. The whole story is symptomatic of an urban/rural political divide that's been exploited for at least a century or more; but in essence the trespass laws in this country are heavily tilted in landowners favour, but despite this they're still plagued by unwanted intruders of all types, the ignorant, the arrogant, the poachers and worse. Using the law to try and keep people away from the back country really hasn't worked for them. As I said elsewhere, long-term landowners would be a lot better off working to build the kind of sensible, sane walking access that's common in Europe.

Yes, it's ironic that laws that are supposed to keep honest recreationalists away don't keep the bad guys away. We could be the farmer's eyes and ears and I have been known to let the cocky know that a calf was exhibiting toot poisoning symptoms. The trespass laws were originally formulated specifically to deal with poachers. That's why it's not an offence to walk on a farm unless you have been trespassed. Recently Frank and I stayed in a hut and hunters arrived. The alpha male immediately got stuck into us, asking if we'd obtained permission from the cocky to stay in the hut. It's a former Landcare research hut that has been done up by permolat with the cooperation of the farmer i.e. allowing vehicular access for the renovation. Well,Frank can get mouthy so in the end the hunter decided we should all chill. I think he was a bit snotted that they were having to share the hut with us when he was psyched up that it would be his private domain. Another issue is the ridiculously long period of closing land off for lambing . In the UK it is for 2 weeks but on Banks Peninsula it used to be for 2 months. Now it is about 6 weeks and Kaituna allows access all-year-round as there is a paper road going up the valley to Packhorse Hut though last year there was a sign up saying closed for lambing but plenty of folks were hiking up the hill! I don't get how they can let those scary dogs run all over the show during lambing but we're out of bounds when the sheep are often used to us being there i.e. Orton Bradley Farm Park. There were lambs being born there a couple of weeks before it was officially closed one year.

@PhilipW: > the trespass laws in this country are heavily tilted in landowners favour How so? To me they just seem likely to confuse everyone in all sides. Many land-owners probably think trespass law is highly skewed against them given they can't officially trespass anyone without catching them in the act or knowing their name and address. I bet land-owners would love it if "stay off my property" signs were legally enforceable. The Overseas Investment provisions that enable requiring a new owner to provide access is a weird contradiction in the traditional ways that access rights seem to work in NZ lately. If this Aorangi owner is forced to sell, it could be an ironic outcome that should a New Zealander buy it then they might be able to simply ignore the unimplemented conditions of the person they bought it off. The more fundamental issue in NZ is that we don't seem to have a reliable way of ensuring reasonable and practical public access to public land that's so often surrounded by private property. Until now so much of it has been up to good-will of landowners, but all sorts of factors lately have been causing those mechanisms which more or less worked in the past to fall apart.