{"id":77504,"date":"2026-06-04T14:38:23","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T02:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/aotearoa\/?p=77504"},"modified":"2026-06-04T14:38:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T02:38:30","slug":"mike-smith-fonterra-when-i-broke-the-rules-i-got-a-record-when-they-break-the-planet-they-rewrite-the-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/aotearoa\/story\/mike-smith-fonterra-when-i-broke-the-rules-i-got-a-record-when-they-break-the-planet-they-rewrite-the-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"When I broke the rules, I got a criminal record. When they break the planet, they just rewrite the rules."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Have you ever noticed that legislation always seems ready to go the moment an industry wants it?<\/p>\n\n

It\u2019s almost like someone else\u2026 wrote it in advance?<\/p>\n\n

Recently, I wrote an article<\/a>\u00a0seething about how the New Zealand government is changing the law specifically to protect corporate polluters from being sued in court – like in the case brought by Mike Smith against Fonterra and the other largest polluters in NZ. Since then, they\u2019ve gone from letting the mask slip to tossing it in the bin.<\/p>\n\n

If you want to know what a Corporate Bodyguard State <\/strong>actually looks like in practice, look at the headlines<\/a> coming out of New Zealand. When a polluting industry wants a piece of legislation, it doesn\u2019t wait around for the democratic process. They just write it.<\/p>\n\n

\"Mike<\/a>
Image credit: RNZ. My friend, Mike Smith, says there appears to be a “deliberate effort” to conceal communications between Luxon\u2019s office and the companies Smith is taking to court.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Recent investigations<\/a> have revealed that briefings from industry lobbyists miraculously reappeared, basically verbatim, as government reform legislation. After being compelled by the courts to be accountable for their climate emissions, Fonterra and Z Energy worked with their lawyers to draft a change in legislation that would override that specific court decision. They wrote the policy, handed it to the Prime Minister\u2019s Office, and watched the state cover up the paper trail<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

And it\u2019s not the first time this has happened. Look at the Ashburton Lyndhurst Irrigation court case<\/a>, where the Environmental Law Initiative successfully sued the regional council in Canterbury for granting a pollution discharge consent to a local irrigation scheme. The High Court agreed that the law strictly prohibited councils from allowing pollution that causes \u201csignificant adverse effects on aquatic life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

It was a monumental win for freshwater and accountability. But instead of cleaning up their act, the corporate farming lobby\u2014spearheaded by Beef + Lamb, DairyNZ, and Federated Farmers\u2014went straight to the Beehive. Panicked that this ruling would threaten intensive, polluting land use across the country, they lobbied the government to fundamentally weaken the law. The government complied, rewrote the law, and completely hollowed out the High Court\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n\n

As political commentator Bryce Edwards aptly put it, \u201cSame year. Same model. Lose in court, draft the law you would prefer, slip it under the right ministerial door, and watch Parliament hand it back to you in legislative form.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

We now know that entities linked to applications for the Government\u2019s Fast-Track Approvals Bill poured over $1 million into political donations<\/a>. For a million dollars, it seems, corporate interests can buy an Act of Parliament, bypassing environmental protections.<\/p>\n\n

Victoria University law academics Graeme Austin and Bj\u00f8rn-Oliver Magsig hit the nail on the head<\/a>, \u201cCourts do things governments cannot\u2026 They cannot be lobbied. They decide on evidence and law.\u201d A government that can be lobbied has now systematically used legislation to eliminate the one institution that cannot be.<\/p>\n\n

They\u2019re gaslighting us<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

The hypocrisy reached a fever pitch last week. At the United Nations, New Zealand voted to support a landmark resolution endorsing the International Court of Justice\u2019s Advisory Opinion (ICJAO) on climate change<\/a>. The global resolution establishes that countries have a legal obligation to protect their citizens from greenhouse gas emissions and can be held liable for climate harm<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n

Our government signed up to it. They stood on the world stage and agreed that climate change is a matter of binding legal accountability, not just political choice.<\/p>\n\n

But back home they\u2019re drafting laws to ensure domestic courts can never hold our own corporate giants to account. They are championing international accountability in New York while passing a legal gag order in Wellington to kill off Mike Smith\u2019s landmark case against our biggest emitters like Fonterra.<\/p>\n\n

It is the ultimate gaslight. They look us in the eye and tell us that climate policy should be made by the government, not set in the courts. But the only reason citizens are forced into the courtroom in the first place is because the government is actively reneging on its fundamental duty to protect us. They say they care, while throwing climate policies onto a bonfire, cutting climate emergency response funding to pay for tax cuts for the already-wealthy, and calling it a \u201cclimate dividend.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n

The path of a reluctant radical<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

Which brings me to a question I get asked a lot\u2014How did I end up here? When people see photos of me scaling a building, or when they hear about my criminal conviction for trespassing on Fonterra\u2019s Te Rapa factory in protest against their pollution<\/a>, they assume I\u2019m a natural rule-breaker. They think I have a predisposition for disruption.<\/p>\n\n

The complete opposite is true! I am a near-pathological rule-abider.<\/p>\n\n

I come from a politically conservative family. For most of my life, even the idea of going on a protest march felt deeply uncomfortable. I\u2019ve cared about nature my whole life and felt compelled to act on climate change since I first learned about it when I was 13 years old, but my first instinct was to try to change the system from within.<\/p>\n\n

I studied ecological economics. I worked in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), genuinely believing we could steer these corporate giants in the right direction. But I was quickly disillusioned when I discovered that CSR is mostly just a marketing exercise. Companies will happily drop their climate targets<\/a> the moment they\u2019ve milked the good PR.<\/p>\n\n

So I turned to the next natural avenue\u2014 democratic advocacy. I have spent years of my life writing dense submissions, giving oral evidence, compiling facts, and meeting with MPs and the executives of our most polluting companies. I made the evidence-based arguments.<\/p>\n\n

It did not work.<\/p>\n\n

I started caring about climate change when I was 13. I became radicalised in my mid-thirties. That is what I call reluctant <\/em>radicalisation. I wasn\u2019t driven by a desire to break the law; I was driven by sheer necessity, because the system has been captured.<\/p>\n\n

Two standards of justice<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

Look at the stark disparity of the system we live in today.<\/p>\n\n

When I break a minor law to pull the emergency brake on a corporate giant that is destroying our biosphere<\/a>, I face the consequences. I am charged, I am convicted, and I now carry a criminal record. You can bet your life that I won\u2019t be invited to drop off a letter at the Prime Minister\u2019s Office asking him to rewrite the law so my conviction disappears.<\/p>\n\n

But when Fonterra, Z Energy, or Federated Farmers are taken to court on the evidence and the facts, they get to slip a preferred draft of a law under the right ministerial door, and watch Parliament hand it back to them as legislation.<\/p>\n\n

When we break the rules to save the planet, we get a criminal record. When they break the planet, they get to rewrite the rules.<\/p>\n\n

The current New Zealand government is setting a dangerous precedent – becoming a shield for climate polluters, protecting them from the courts, from the voters, and from reality.<\/p>\n\n

I did not want to be a radical. I wanted the submissions to work. But when the state becomes the personal security detail for the entities destroying our future, abiding by the rules is no longer a moral virtue. It is compliance in our own destruction.<\/p>\n\n

If they can rewrite the laws to erase our democratic victories, then active resistance is the only response we have left.<\/p>\n\n

History shows us that when the rules are rigged, real people standing together and resisting is what moves the world forward. We kicked deep-sea oil out of Aotearoa, and we can win our democracy back again.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\n\n

This post was republished from Substack<\/a> with the kind permission of the author.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

Greenpeace is calling on world leaders to regulate the intensive livestock sector to prevent the worst of the climate crisis. Join us today – sign the petition now.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n \t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tPETITION: Stop intensive meat and dairy expansion\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Call on world leaders to stop intensive meat & dairy expansion.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t \n Take Action\n <\/a>\n \t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/section>\n\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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