Lauer is entitled to compensation if the access is granted.
Access would allow vehicle access to Hawea Conservation Park at the northeastern end of Lake Hawea.
Sage told reporters the previous government did not provide adequate walking access through the property at the time the sale was signed off on the recommendation of the Overseas Investment Office.
"I don't know what ministerial involvement there was but it was a decision made by ministers … and they didn't provide adequately for access. The Walking Access Commission asked for vehicle access. It's a long way along the edge of the lake," she said.
The OIO recommended that there were other benefits from the application and recommended that it be approved.
Sage said an easement for public access to pastoral land would result in compensation, "but not the millions that is now being talked about".
Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters has also laid the issue at the feet of the previous government.
"What on Earth was the National Party doing in April last year allowing that sort of sale in the way they did," he said.
"The reality is they were selling it off to anyone offshore who had enough money to buy it ... in a way that they never should have been and which we will not allow now," he said.
"We do not envisage sales like this going on in the future, that's why the new Government has changed the policy completely. I do not envisage selling out this country like the last government did."
Lauer told Radio NZ yesterday that the Walking Access Commission and Department of Conservation were seeking the easement now because of his dismissal from NBC's Today Show in November over alleged sexual misconduct.
"I believe the groups that are behind this are in some ways unfortunately taking advantage of some difficult times I've been through over the past six months and I think they see me as an easy mark," he said.
"And what they're going to try to do is put this through, which would set a precedent because this has not been done ever before with a pastoral leaseholder or property owner without that person's consent."
Walking Access Commission chief executive Eric Pyle denied that.
He said the commission had been talking to Lauer's representatives "off and on" ever since the Overseas Investment Office gave him consent to buy the property last year with a condition that he acted "reasonably".
"The condition is about acting reasonably. What we are trying to do is define what that is," Pyle said.
Lauer's lawyer Graeme Todd told the Otago Daily Times there had been no issues over access and there was no need for such an easement.
Public access through the station was one of the stipulations of the OIO's approval of the sale, he said.
"The public have exercised such access on numerous occasions since we have purchased," Todd said.
"There have just been a few occasions where the access wasn't able to be granted and nobody has raised any concerns that such denial was unreasonable."
