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The Government has recently introduced <\/a>two bills to replace the Resource Management Act. These bills will accelerate <\/a>the destruction of nature and embed the crony capitalism that has become endemic under this Government. In this brief article I step through a case study of how the RMA really works in practice, and why the Government is changing it.<\/p>\n\n The RMA and regional councils have been two of the favourite bogeymen of the Luxon Government. And the allegedly negative impact of the RMA on agribusiness is a recurring theme <\/a>in the government narrative, with the rules to protect freshwater a particular bugbear.<\/p>\n\n But often these criticisms are surprisingly vague, and just hearsay. The Minister in charge of replacing the RMA, Chris Bishop, makes criticisms of the RMA that are replete with unattributed anecdotes. He says <\/a>that \u2018Ministers continue to receive concerning reports of councils across the country applying stringent, unnecessary, and burdensome requirements when issuing new consents, particularly for our farmers and growers\u201d. Yet when I asked for these \u2018concerning reports\u2019, they were unavailable, in fact, I was told by one of his many ministerial staff that Bishop had used the word \u2018reports\u2019 as a verb not a noun (I kid you not) and hence there were no \u2018reports\u2019 to provide to me!<\/p>\n\n The effect of this is to make it difficult to test the veracity of the criticisms of the RMA and regional councils, because they are couched in very general terms, whereas the resource issues and conflicts that the RMA manages are often very local and specific. This is deliberate, to create the vibe that the RMA is, according to the Prime Minister, \u2018broken\u2019 and hence they have licence to replace it.<\/p>\n\n But occasionally we get an insight into the on-the-ground reality of the RMA battles, which show what it\u2019s really about. And that came this year with the case of the Santoft Irrigators. I\u2019ve been digging into the issue with a bunch of Official Information Act requests, and it is revealing<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n The Santoft Irrigators case has received a lot of ministerial attention. Minister for the Environment, Penny Simmonds, could not identify <\/a>a single other example where she had directly intervened on behalf of a particular set of businesses in order to help them get their consents from a regional council. The Santoft Irrigators have had the attention of Chris Bishop, the Minister for RMA Reform, who directly contacted the regional council about the issue. They had meetings with two Ministers, Simmonds and Andrew Hoggard (Associate Agriculture), and contact with another, Todd McClay (Agriculture).<\/p>\n\n The alleged wrongs done to the Santoft Irrigators is an illuminating case study in the RMA and regional councils, and, as we shall see, the evidence is that the RMA and the regional council were acting to protect our shared common resources (groundwater), while the Santoft Irrigators were pursuing their own private interests (money) at the cost of the community and the environment. <\/p>\n\n Yet it is the Irrigators who received a warm hearing from the Government, not the regional council, which is now slated for disestablishment, justified on the basis of Bishop\u2019s vague homilies about councils telling people how they should live.<\/p>\n\n A letter of complaint from the Santoft Irrigators<\/strong><\/p>\n\n The most recent cycle of conflict began with a letter <\/a>of complaint in June 2025 to RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. It was from a group of agribusinesses about delays in obtaining new resource consents to abstract groundwater, after their previous consents expired. <\/p>\n\n These agribusinesses were based in the Santoft area of the Horizons Regional Council – roughly north west of Bulls, mostly to the west of SH3.<\/p>\n\n They are using irrigated water pumped up from bores, mostly to grow grass in sand dune country, mostly for dairy and other livestock, some of them running high intensity dairy but not all. For convenience I\u2019ve called them the \u2018Santoft Irrigators\u2019 but not all irrigators in the area signed the letter of complaint. <\/p>\n\n To give you a sense of them, one of the complainants is John O\u2019Brien from the OB Group, running a huge intensive dairy operation with thousands of dairy cattle. OB had converted <\/a>the sand dunes to intensive dairying over 2010 – 2017 by bulldozing the ancient sand dunes flat, drilling deep bores for irrigation water, installing centre pivot irrigation and adding fertiliser. Adding thousands of dairy cattle into porous sand dune country has had dramatic downstream impacts on places like Lake Koitiata, as the pollution runs through the sand and into the old sand dune lakes which are now highly polluted<\/a>. OB\u2019s revenue is not public but it would be many millions of dollars.<\/p>\n\n The Santoft Irrigators complained that the regional council was delaying their new water abstraction consents and the council was considering a reduction of their water takes by 30%. They stated that \u201cto reduce irrigation by 30% on sand country is to effectively render irrigating the land futile, due to the low water-holding capacity of the soil.\u201d <\/p>\n\n The regional council was threatening their very livelihood, it seemed.<\/p>\n\n You can almost hear the political wheels turning in the National Party and Act Party politicians\u2019 heads on receiving such a letter. Here were the long-suffering agribusiness owners, aka farmers, the Government had talked about so much, who were being thwarted by green bureaucracy. Moreover, one of these complaining agribusinesses was co-owned by Suze Redmayne – National Party MP and Party Whip with the biggest <\/a>property portfolio in Parliament – so it must be true. What brilliant material for their PR campaign against the RMA and regional councils!<\/p>\n\n So, with alacrity, the Environment Minister Penny Simmonds invited the maligned business owners to a meeting with not one, not two, but three ministers of the Crown: Penny Simmonds, Todd McClay, Minister of Agriculture, and Andrew Hoggard, Associate Minister of Agriculture. Hoggard\u2019s dairy farm is in a neighbouring district.<\/p>\n\n They met on August 14 2025 in Parliament, and it seems that only Ministers Simmonds and Hoggard could make it. Richard Redmayne, the husband of the National Party MP and co-owner of one of the businesses, Tunnel Hill farm worth $18m, also attended <\/a>the meeting.<\/p>\n\n There are not many businesses in the country who can get a meeting with two ministers within two months of writing a letter of complaint. But these businesses had a story that was of great interest to the government, a story of the evils of the RMA and regional councils, and the fact they were well connected politically no doubt helped.<\/p>\n\n Following the meeting, on September 1, the Environment Minister Penny Simmonds whipped off a rather imperious letter <\/a>to Michael McCartney, the CEO of the Horizons Regional Council. She set a meeting with Andrew Hoggard and Todd McClay, eight days later on September 9 at the Beehive at 3.15pm, and invited the CEO to attend. <\/p>\n\n She wanted to know from the CEO of Horizons \u2018why there have been delays [in issuing new water abstraction consents], and what needs to be done to achieve a timely solution for the affected farmers particularly given the Government\u2019s commitment to helping the primary sector grow New Zealand\u2019s economy.\u2019 This was plainly putting the regional council under pressure to approve the consents to Redmayne and the others.<\/p>\n\n When Lan Pham MP released the letter to the media Simmonds said <\/a>she was concerned about the impact of the delay on these businesses: \u201cit\u2019s wholly appropriate for me to meet with stakeholders from the primary sector and to engage with local authorities to discuss their performance in relation to the Resource Management Act.”<\/p>\n\n She later conceded, in response <\/a>to my OIA, that this was the only <\/em>letter to a regional council she had written which was about resource consents for particular <\/em>businesses, rather than just the usual general complaints she makes about the RMA and general pressure on <\/a>councils to approve consent applications.<\/p>\n\n Ms Simmonds September 1 letter also required a written briefing on the issue from the CEO of Horizons – to be delivered to her by email, in three days sharp. She was hot on the trail of this outrage.<\/p>\n\n And in due course, and on time, the briefing <\/a>did arrive and, dear readers, it was illuminating and perhaps not quite what Penny, Todd and Andrew had hoped for.<\/p>\n\n The regional council <\/strong>response<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n It turned out that Horizons Regional Council had spent quite a lot<\/em> of staff time and ratepayers money servicing the needs of the Santoft Irrigators (including the local National MP and Party Whip) going back to 2013. <\/p>\n\n Amongst other things, in 2017 the Council contracted independent expert consultants to model the groundwater of the Santoft area and the broader Rangit\u012bkei Groundwater Management Zone, following reports of declining water levels. The expert produced a long and detailed peer reviewed report. <\/p>\n\n This report was updated <\/a>in 2023 with further information and was again peer reviewed. When I asked the regional council, they estimated that just the most recent report and staff time cost Horizons ratepayers $200,000 in the last two years. It is worth noting that 70% of the Horizons ratepayers are urban.<\/p>\n\n The expert report found that groundwater levels were declining due to increased abstraction of groundwater for irrigation by agribusiness. This decline was expected to continue unless abstraction was reduced by 30%. <\/p>\n\n In 2024 the Council commissioned a 160 page technical peer review <\/a>of the 2023 report, which found that the model added to the knowledge of the groundwater system but the reviewers wanted further refinement on some technical aspects of the modelling to be more certain of the conclusions.<\/p>\n\n The Regional Council analysis of all this evidence led them to a concern that falling groundwater levels due to overabstraction would be bad for the natural environment affecting rivers and lakes, but also bad for all agribusinesses in the area, including those that don\u2019t have an MP and Party Whip as a shareholder. This would breach their regional plan as well as the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management. The council were (and still are) seeking further information from Santoft Irrigators on the impact of water extraction from their bores on neighbouring farmers\u2019 bores.<\/p>\n\n And, there was the risk that the lower groundwater levels would lead to saltwater intrusion from the ocean, of which there was already some evidence. And I hardly need to tell you that would be a big problem for everyone, even including the special group getting the ministerial treatment.<\/p>\n\n As a consequence, the Regional Council staff were proposing to change new water abstraction consent conditions to try to stop the groundwater levels dropping even further. Those seeking new groundwater consents were offered the choice of shorter five <\/a>year consents with fixed maximum extraction volumes, or longer 15 <\/a>year consents with conditions that allowed the council to reduce abstraction if water levels kept falling. <\/p>\n\n It was a precautionary approach to protect the groundwater in the face of falling well levels and some uncertainty about the groundwater modelling. Some of the consent holders in the region had accepted this reality and taken up the offer of the new consents but not so these Santoft Irrigators group – they were very unhappy at being asked to take this precautionary approach to protect the groundwater.<\/p>\n\n The briefing explained that staff conducted numerous workshops with the Santoft Irrigators, and had freely shared the expert reports, paid for by the largely urban ratepayers of Horizons Regional Council. The farmers claimed the report was wrong and that the farmers had their own data to prove it was wrong. They were invited to provide this data, but, according to Horizons, only one did.<\/p>\n\n Following this written briefing, provided by the Regional Council to the Minister, the meeting between the Ministers and the Horizons Regional Council staff went ahead on September 9. We have little record of it except that one of the Council staff recorded <\/a>that Chris Bishop refused to attend without elected Councillors being present, and Penny Simmonds ended the meeting.<\/p>\n\n What we learned<\/strong><\/p>\n\n The story on the surface seemed consistent with National\u2019s anti-RMA rhetoric: the staff at Horizons Regional Council were wielding the RMA against these poor agribusiness owners to delay and place conditions on their consents to abstract water for irrigation, and in the process threatening their businesses. <\/p>\n\n The reality as we\u2019ve seen was very different:<\/p>\n\n It was a classic case of public interest regulation to protect the common good against private interest short term profits. There is of course absolutely nothing novel in this – businesses were trying to push environmental boundaries to maximise profits and regulators were doing their job of investigating and setting boundaries to protect the environment and other water users whose bores could dry up. <\/p>\n\n What was disturbing was the Minister for the Environment intervened to pressure the regional council to capitulate to these businesses. And even more disturbing was the political connections of one of these businesses – Suze Redmayne MP will be a direct financial beneficiary if her business gets the abstraction consents.<\/p>\n\n In this Santoft Irrigator story we see a microcosm of the bigger RMA and regional council issues. The RMA has to manage conflicting resource usage demands – the irrigators want the water for their businesses, other land users will lose access to the water if their bores dry up, and the broader public interest in protecting nature will be impacted if the lakes and wetlands dry up. <\/p>\n\n The Irrigators have the loudest voice and significant financial resources, and are deeply connected to the ruling regime. <\/p>\n\n But the RMA, and the regional councils that operate it, are an obstacle to the irrigators getting \u2018their\u2019 water. The RMA and regional councils are protecting the public interest in groundwater and hence they are a problem.<\/p>\n\n It is these private interest demands for resources that really sits behind all the rhetoric about the problems of the RMA. They want to remove the laws and agencies that protect the public interest, so that they can get access to the water. And this resource conflict is repeated in region after region across the country.<\/p>\n\n This is at the heart of the lobby to destroy the RMA and regional councils – it is not about consents for garages.<\/p>\n\n And of course it is the reason that Federated Farmers are celebrating the demise of the RMA and regional councils.<\/p>\n\n Not just about taking water – it\u2019s also about dumping pollution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n This is all pretty bad, but it\u2019s not just about taking too much water. These very same businesses have been engaged in a long term battle to prevent nitrogen limits too – and they are on the verge of success as a result of law changes that Suze Redmayne and her Government MP colleagues have already made to the RMA.<\/p>\n\n Horizons Regional Council tried to introduce limits to the amount of nitrogen that these and other farms could leach into the groundwater under the One Plan. They have been subject to extensive legal action with the latest decision from the Environment Court pending.<\/p>\n\n In the meantime Lake Koitiata is heavily polluted from agribusiness on the sand dunes, and other water bodies such as the Rangitikei River have been degrading<\/a> over the last decade. For context, 4500 tonnes a year of urea <\/a>was used just in the Rangitikei district. <\/p>\n\n The ongoing degradation of freshwater makes it harder for the Santoft Irrigators to argue that they should be allowed to keep polluting. This is because under the old section 107 of the RMA, councils could not give a consent to discharge pollution, like nitrate into groundwater, if it would cause \u2018significant adverse effects on aquatic life<\/em>\u2019. <\/p>\n\n The Santoft Irrigators, pouring water, cow urine and urea on the sand, want consents that allow them to keep doing this but, given the degraded state of freshwater, this will very likely cause significant adverse effects on aquatic life<\/em> in Lake Koitiata and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n