Jason Herrick: Federated Farmers Southland President on the call for locals to boycott Fish & Game

A call to action from Federated Farmers Southland for locals to boycott Fish & Game. 

It wants members to block anglers from their land by removing access signs, replacing them with an orange ribbon. 

It follows a court decision requiring many of the region's farmers to gain a resource consent to lawfully operate. 

Fed Farmers Southland President Jason Herrick says they're fed up with Fish & Game's anti-farming rhetoric. 

He told Mike Hosking that it’s been an ongoing process with Fish & Game pushing back against everything they’re doing, and this is the straw that broke the camel’s back. 

Herrick says that in their opinion, the court decision being made by one person, is not democratic. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now there's a script going on in Southland between Fed
Farmers and Fish and Game. So this court ruling has
meant three thousand farmers in the region will need to
apply for resource consent to farm. So as a result,
Fed Farmers wants their members to remove angler access from
their properties.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Now.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Fed Farmers Southland president Jason Herricks with us on this
Jason Morning, to you the.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Morning, Mike, how are you on fine morning?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Very well? Indeed, this is the fame section seventy and
I started reading about Section seventy earlier on this week
and I wondered where this was going to go? How
long has this been bubbling?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
This has been bubbling for a good number of years now.
So the Water and Land Plan within Environment Southland has
been ongoing for ten years and an out of Environment
courts and finally with the Court of Appeal. And we've
had no end to push back from Fish and Game
Southland here on this plan. But it's a lot more

(00:50):
than that. We've had a whole lot of issues from
gravel extraction to waternal lagoon issues to just general push
back a case farming practices full stop. Also the dirty
dairy and campaign that they run a good number of
years ago as well. You know, it's just been an
ongoing process with fish and game pushing back against everything

(01:11):
we're doing. And to be honest, this last one was
th the camel's back really.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Fair enough too. So having said that, I read from it.
I think it was McLay. I may be wrong, but
there was a minister in the government this week you said,
don't worry, we will get Section seventy sorted out. Is
that true? And do you believe them?

Speaker 2 (01:28):
We'll believe it when we see it, right, So we
won't guarantee it until it happens. So we're not going
to you know, well on that now until it actually happens.
We're just absolutely sick of fishing Game South London on
the continuous bars pushback against us. So that's why we're
taking this call of action.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Having said that, Fishing Game, although they have gone to
court and although they are a pain in the ass,
have in fact one and so that's the process, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, Well that's just on one judge's opinion and that's
the of them. It's not the get democratic when it
goes to the courts, right, it is one person's opinion
on the ideology or the approach that they want to take,
whether they're green or whether they're venturist or whatever. It's
all on one person. It's not actually democratic in our opinion.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
What happened to and this was more generally from the
central government that this hole these people, it's under fast
track or it's under the IRMA or whatever, that these
people who hold things up by continually forever going to court,
all that's coming to an end. Is that not true?

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Ah? I don't think it is, because we get given
these minority extremist groups the voice and keep giving them
the ammo, you know, and they're taking taxpayer and right
payers money and fighting these things in court. Ye see.
So this that's a precedent for all in New Zealand.
With the water and lamp plannet now allows all these
little extremist groups to now take all the regional councils

(02:52):
around New Zealand to task over their water and lamp
plan locally.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Well, I've got you, Jason. The business of the weather
and spring and all that sort of stuff is there
whole for spring that things are going to dry out
a bit and some grass is going to grow and
all that.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Oh look We're just taking the window one day at
a time now, where the forecast has been wrong on
so many occasions, you know, so if you're look too
far into the future and believe what the weather forecast says,
it can get you down. So you know, we just
wake up every day now and just take it as
it comes.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Good on you, Jason, go well, have a good week.
I appreciate it very much, Jason Herrick. I don't know
who I'm going to get, but we'll eventually deal with.
I didn't even bore you with the detail on Section
seventy's it's what you can do on a farm. In
other words, you know, are you allowed to discharge that
amount of effluent into where, et cetera. And so that's
the regional came back to the pugging thing. It's not dissimilar.

(03:39):
It's generally around the idea of what you can do
on a farm. So it's slope, it's pugging, it's discharge.
It's how the council sees your farm and what you
can and can't do, and so then they go to
court every time they because of course the fish and
game and people don't want you to do any farming
at all because can I just thank you so much
for reading that on my behalf the's no wherey do

(04:00):
you not find that grubbing section? Sivity? How do you
not gone on to it? For more from the mic
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