Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill – Public Submissions now closed
The Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill (Bill) is currently before the Select Committee, with the public submission period closing on 22 February.
As covered in our August 2020 edition of this newsletter, the Bill was introduced as part of a review of the management of approximately 1.2 million hectares of Crown owned high country pastoral land (or 5% of New Zealand’s total land area).
The current iteration of the Bill ends the practice of tenure review and introduces a new regulatory system which controls the activities which may be undertaken on Crown land.
The Bill has proven controversial within the farming sector, with a number of stakeholders raising concerns that the Bill is before the Environment Committee rather than the Primary Production Committee for review. It remains to be seen whether any substantial changes to the Bill will be forthcoming, with the Environment Committee’s report scheduled to be released on 25 May 2021.
We will continue to report on the Bill as it makes its way through the legislative process.
PDF version: Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill – public submissions now closed
This article was included in Edition 4 of our Rural and agribusiness newsletter – Rural Autumn 2021 which you can read here