As many predicted, government policies to address the environmental impact of intensive winter grazing are a shambles.
The absence of common sense means that in the past two years the government has backed down on four elements of the intensive winter grazing (IWG) component of its Essential Freshwater policy: crop resowing dates, slope maps, pugging limits and now consent conditions.
Government officials are running out of time to have Freshwater Management Plan criteria for IWG, an alternative to resource consent, ready by the November 1 deadline as promised.
This means thousands of farmers will require resource consent to winter stock on crops next year – but councils warn they will not be able to process the expected volume of applications in time.
This poorly constructed policy sheets back to what was an inadequate eight-week consultation period in 2020 that coincided with calving and lambing.
Claims at the time that the consultation was window-dressing, that Wellington policy makers had their minds made up, appear valid.
The government achieved the desired headlines – that it was cleaning up the waterways – but in reality the IWG policy was destined to fail because it lacked common sense, it was confusing, and, importantly, it never had farmer buy-in because it was rushed.
Uncertainty caused by the constant tinkering has accentuated a very obvious decline in farmer confidence towards regulators and the policy-creating process.
There is little doubt some intensive wintering practices needed improving, but encouraging change was made harder because of the approach of the government and the poor quality of its policies.
In their rush, policy makers failed or refused to acknowledge that some of their requirements, such as pugging depths and resowing dates, were impractical and that changing farm systems does not happen overnight, let alone in none year.
Under this and the previous term of the government, the Wellington bureaucracy has grown substantially in size and influence.
But as is evident going by IWG and multiple other polices, increased size hasn’t always resulted in workable or better legislation.
Perhaps the lesson from the IWG policy debacle is for those bureaucrats to listen more.
