NZ Forestry Owners Association says court finding a ‘dreadful precedent’

FORESTRY - File picture of a pine forest near Mangakino in the central North Island. 21 October 2008 New Zealand Herald Photograph by Alan Gibson. NZH 16Sep09 - BANK BRANCHES: Without an ETS, Maori would not be able to unlock credits from the Central North Island forest assets. PICTURE / ALAN GIBSON NZH 31May10 - NAD 05Jun10 - NRA 18Jun10 - SUN 04Jul10 - WTA 29Jul10 - NAD 12Aug10 - WGP 22Jan15 - BEG TO DIFFER: Ahem, Mr Groser. A million hectares of average productivity radiata pine could offset at least 90 per cent of total agricultural emissions for 30-40 years, writes Denis Hocking in response to claims New Zealand has no obvious options to reducing greenhouse gases. PHOTO/FILE RGP 24Sep15 - RGP 22Oct15 - RGP 10May16 - CHALLENGE: Climate change is a challenge for the forestry industry. PHOTO/FILE WGP 23Jun16 - WAG 30Jun16 - NAG 30Jun16 - BTG 03Aug16 - UP AND UP: Forestry in the Central North Island has competitive advantages, an industry specialist says. RGP 04Aug16 - FORESTRY: Managing the harvest will be vital. BTG 01Nov16 - Should assets such as forests be owned by the government?PHOTO/FILE RGP 01Dec16 - MORE: The Afforestation Grant Scheme aims to see more trees planted. RGP 23Mar17 - The Afforestation Grant Scheme has seen about 7700ha of new forest planted. WGP 30Mar17 - SEEING WOOD FOR TREES: Planting forests will give us time to come up with permanent ways of eliminating emissions, but it will be only a stopgap measure. PHOTO/FILE RGP 13Apr17 - SEEING WOOD FOR TREES: Planting forests will give us time to come up with permanent ways of eliminating emissions, but it will be only a stopgap measure. PHOTO/FILE NAG 11May17 - SEEING WOOD FOR TREES: Planting forests will give us time to come up with permanent ways of eliminating emissions, but it will be only a stopgap measure. PHOTO/FILE BTG 14Aug17 - NZH 27Nov17 - Picture/Alan Gibson NZH 08Mar18 - Forestry rights do not involve the sale of the land. RGP 28Mar19 - WGP 11Jul19 - I'm not a fan of

The Forest Owners Association (NZFOA) wants the incoming government to change the Local Government Act to protect minority ratepayers in rural areas, after a recent Court of Appeal judgement.

The court dismissed a judicial review against Wairoa District Council, which had imposed rates on larger forest owners five times above those on neighbouring farms.

In proceedings heard before the High Court in February 2022, the NZFOA challenged the rating decisions made by the Wairoa District Council in 2021, which reallocated the distribution of rates among Wairoa ratepayers. In particular, the redistribution of rating onto forestry land and rural farming land provided relief to the residential ratepayers of Wairoa for whom the rating obligation exceeded affordability thresholds identified by Local Government nationally.

In a decision released by the Court of Appeal on August 24, the Court of Appeal dismissed the NZ FOA appeal.

FOA president Grant Dodson described the judgement, which followed a similar Supreme Court decision, as a “dreadful precedent which legitimises councils’ ability to abuse minority landowners under the guise of democratic process”.

“Wairoa District Council is responsible for acting in the best economic, environmental, social and cultural interests of the community. Yet the Mayor is trying to force new forestry out of the region with a preposterously high rates bill.

“He may have succeeded.

“I know many forest companies will no longer invest in planting in Wairoa, due to the impact the higher rates will have on returns over a 30-year rotation.

“I’ve seen the new rates bill for just one medium-sized Wairoa forest. It’s barely 800 hectares. The council will be charging it more than $4 million in rates before the owners can harvest a single tree.

“Yet next door, farmers with woodlots of up to 100 hectares, have been left exempt from the new rate.

“Wairoa foresters will look elsewhere, which will reduce local farm prices, and lock the land into the single land use option of sheep and beef farming forever.

“This is an own goal for the farming groups who supported this.

“The huge differential won’t benefit the Wairoa community. It will also hurt the Wairoa District Council as its future rates take will fall.

“Wairoa council ignored independent evidence which we had drawn their attention to, that there was more employment in forestry than hill country farming.

“Instead, it preferred incorrect assertions from Beef + Lamb NZ that forest employment was far less, because harvesting was so infrequent that harvest workers shouldn’t be counted.

“The whole reason Wairoa council said they decided to review its rates system, was it realised that hill country farming was in decline.

“Yet they then discounted the benefits of forests, which offer economic opportunities and improved diversification and resilience for the local community. Then there’s the stability for erodible land classes which forests protect, and the fact that production forests in Wairoa sequester three quarters of a million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

“The council dismissed all of this.

“The council and most of the pastoral community know forestry is not responsible for most rural community decline. Depopulation has a range of drivers. This is merely a convenient justification to charge a sector, which it inaccurately sees as easily able to afford to pay higher rates.”

Grant Dodson says he appreciates the funding dilemma the Wairoa council is in.

“I really hope whichever government is in power after the election, that it takes notice of the special environmental and economic vulnerabilities of Tairāwhiti and Wairoa in particular. These were identified by the Parata Inquiry into landuse.

“The council is quite right to complain that some forest industry benefits flow out of the region to the industries and ports of Gisborne in the north or Napier in the south,” Dodson said.

Read our coverage of the Court's decision and the reaction of Wairoa's Mayor Craig Little