Land Information New Zealand has made peace overtures it hopes will end the recent acrimonious relationship with many of its pastoral lessees.
At last week's Federated Farmers high country conference, Land Information New Zealand (Linz) announced the establishment of a specialist unit to look after Crown pastoral leases and also promised to work harder to improve its relationship with lessees.
The unit's new manager, Mathew Clark, said this was a proactive move by Linz to rebuild relationships.
The relationship between lessees and the government department has been strained in recent years, and Mr Clark conceded one property had not been visited by Linz in 10 years.
Lessees have been frustrated at changes to tenure review, whereby the Government has excluded lakeside properties except under certain conditions and when it ignored the advice of a review group it commissioned to look at the level and methodology of setting pastoral lease rents.
That review found rents were fair and in some cases excessive, but the Government has decided a charge for amenity values such as views would be included in future rents.
That issue is the subject of a court case to be held in Dunedin in October.
Mr Clark said the Government intended being a high country landlord indefinitely and the new Christchurch-based unit would foster one-on-one relationships and be more responsive to requests and questions.
Mr Clark said three preliminary tenure review proposals would be advertised in the coming weeks and 10 substantive proposals had been approved in the past seven months.
To date, 178,000ha (48%) has been surrendered to the Crown through tenure review and 194,000 (52%) has been freeholded.
Of the 35 leases in the process at the time changes were made to lakeside policy, 20 had agreed to the policy conditions and were back in negotiations, Mr Clark said.
Two reviews requested by the Government viewed favourably the way land was managed by farmers, he said.
One review looked at husbandry of the land and found a high level of compliance and good practice.
Another looked at whether farmers complied with the law with discretionary consents, and again found a high level of compliance.
Mr Clark said Linz hoped to improve the speed with which discretionary consents were considered.
Comment was also passed that Linz staff who made decisions were moving further away from dealing and negotiating with lessees.
Mr Clark said those decisions would continue to be made in Wellington, but that staff had to understand and explain the rationale behind a compromise so the decision-makers under