KEY POINTS:
It's fair to say Ann Brower would be an endangered species if she set foot on a high country sheep station. In popularity with South Island farmers, she'd rank somewhere below a conservationist politician from Auckland.
The American academic with a PhD in the politics of publicly-owned land came to New Zealand in 2004 on a Fulbright scholarship.
She couldn't help but take an interest in the Tenure Review process under way on the South Island pastoral lease blocks, whereby leaseholders could gain freehold title to large parts of their runs in exchange for the Crown taking back vulnerable land for conservation parks.
Under a valuation formula based on the land's productive capability for grazing, farmers often ended up not only with valuable freehold land but compensation payments for land "resumed" by the Crown.
Using the Official Information Act, she cut through a bureaucratic smokescreen to find that, by early 2006, the Crown had paid a net $18.5 million to resume 196,000ha of high-altitude unproductive land while runholders gained clear title to 270,000 ha of the most accessible lower-altitude land.
Many then subdivided and sold off blocks for between $100,000 and $6 million a hectare. Others started vineyards or tourism ventures on the 58 per cent of land which was freeholded.
It seemed odd to Brower that the Crown was being so generous in the disposal of taxpayers' land.
Her new book, Who Owns the High Country?, outlines why she thinks the Crown dropped the ball - a combination of bureaucrats taking a neutral stance against a powerful vested interest (the farmers), mythical thinking about the runholders' legal status and valuations which took no account of potential alternatives to grazing.
Around Lake Wanaka, she writes, the Crown privatised 18,957ha between 2003 and 2007 while retaining 4767ha for conservation, paying the new owners of the shores of Lake Wanaka a net $263,000.
"Similar changes are occurring up and down the length of the Southern Alps. Land near Tekapo, Wakatipu, the Rakaia, Hawea, the Waimakariri - all privatised in the past decade.
"This land reform will most certainly change the face of the South Island forever. It has been the most significant land reform in New Zealand since British colonisation."
After her report was publicised, Federated Farmers sent a 20-page letter of complaint to Fulbright and accused Lincoln University of inadequate supervision. Her analysis was "crude and naive", she lacked scholarly integrity and "failed to grasp ... property rights". Perhaps her biggest crime was being a "visiting American".
Brower and New South Wales academic John Page went further, however, in a paper questioning assumptions that the 1948 Act and the 1998 Crown Pastoral Lease Act gave leaseholders exclusive possession. Brower even challenges whether runholders should be called lessees.
"If the original statute does not explicitly confer a right such as exclusive possession, then that right does not exist. In fact, section 26 of the Land Act gives the Crown free rights of ingress, egress and regress at all reasonable times."
Thus "a primary goal of tenure review - to provide recreation access to the high country - was, and still is, superfluous. It appears the Crown has held public access rights all along."
Unsurprisingly, farmers disagree. They claim the pastoral leases give runholders basically the same exclusive occupancy rights as owners of freehold land. Lawyer Kit Mouat says a perpetual lease is "almost as good as freehold".
"The Crown gave away all its rights in 1948 when they issued a [perpetual] pastoral lease. If the Crown wants to take this, then you are into a compensation situation where you have to buy the lessee out."
The Crown Law Office also disagrees with the Brower/Page challenge to the runholders' exclusive occupancy. But the academics' paper has prompted Fish and Game New Zealand to seek a High Court declaration clarifying the runholders' status and their right to exclude the public.
The application, expected to be heard early next year, has further riled farmers, particularly with the passage through Parliament of the Walking Access Act, which provides a process for negotiating public access.
Brower also questions whether tenure review has resulted in the best outcomes for conservation. She cites a Landcare Research study which found land resumed by the Crown tended to be above 1000m and "less rich in biodiversity, threatened ecosystems, species and habitats" than the lowland areas being freeholded. The study found just 4 per cent of land high in conservation value had been protected since tenure review began in 1998.
The row prompted Land Information Minister David Parker to order a review of the land reform process. In June last year, the Cabinet approved significant changes to tenure review.
It emphasised the Crown's power to withdraw from negotiations where it felt landscape, biodiversity or lakeside values could not be sufficiently protected. The minister could inspect future deals before they were finalised.
Then, last November, the Government announced a list of 65 properties subject to heightened scrutiny, including 38 where negotiations were under way. Subdivision would be prevented within 5km of a lake while every deal "must protect indigenous biodiversity values, wetlands and [prime] recreation access routes".
Brower, however, remains wary of the policy changes which, she argues, sound lofty but leave room for interpretation. In deals finalised this year - at Mesopotamia, Redcliffe, Mt Potts Station and Mt Cook Station - old patterns persist, she says.
"The deals still privatise low-altitude land that is most productive and most threatened whilst protecting the least threatened. And the Government has paid dearly - just over $9 million in two months after spending $18 million in 14 years."
The negotiations shifted nearly 39,000ha into conservation land while 8500ha was privatised. Lakeshore land is protected by landscape covenants and development is prohibited.
Brower says if the policy turnaround continues to be enforced, the high country will look very different in 20 years than it would otherwise have done. "While the lakefronts privatised before 2006 will likely soon play host to subdivisions and golf courses, some lakesides might avoid that fate."
Who Owns the High Country? by Ann Brower (Craig Potton Publishing, $29.99)
