Farmer lobby group the High Country Accord has lodged a complaint with state services commissioner Mark Prebble, claiming interference by Lands Minister Mr Parker and Conservation Minister Steve Chadwick in the tenure review process for Crown pastoral lease land.
This is the second allegation of interference against list MP Mr Parker, of Dunedin.
In 2006, former electricity commissioner Roy Hemmingway said pressure from Mr Parker, who is also Minister of Energy, and Finance Minister Michael Cullen over electricity supplies to Auckland, forced him from his position.
Mr Parker said yesterday the accord's claim was ‘‘patently wrong'', and that he was ensuring taxpayer's money was spent wisely.
The accord has sought clarification from Mr Prebble on the role of the commissioner of Crown lands(CCL), saying it believed Mr Parker and Ms Chadwick had usurped officials by having the final say on tenure review proposals.
It claims the Crown Pastoral Lands Act gave the commissioner the final decision after consultation with the director-general of conservation.
Accord chairman Ben Todhunter was critical of Mr Parker's involvement.
‘‘Effectively, all this interference by the minister means tenure review has stopped,'' Mr Todhunter said.
Under tenure review, lessees of high country pastoral lease land can negotiate the right to freehold part of their property in return for allowing areas of conservation value to be returned to the Crown.
However, it has become politically sensitive, with the Government fearful of farmers
subdividing freehold land on lake shores or within significant landscapes.
As a result, it has refused to negotiate tenure review on 65 properties.
Mr Parker has also instructed Land Information New Zealand that he would view all preliminary proposals, an act critics regard as another form of meddling.
‘‘Essentially, the minister has said ‘I decide tenure review, when the CCL has the power to do that,'' Mr Todhunter said.
Mr Parker said tenure review cost the Government $10 million a year, and apart from a hold-up last year, when the parameters on the process were changed, progress had not slowed.
In 2006, eight preliminary proposals were notified and in 2007 there were two, according to Linz figures.
A further two were being considered by Mr Parker, with another about to be put on his desk.
Mr Parker said that while statutory responsibility for tenure review decisions lay with the commissioner, that decision was reliant on funding and there was no legal obligation on the Lands Minister to provide that funding.
He received an analysis on every tenure review financial settlement and this provided an ‘‘additional check . . . by giving the Minister for Land Information the opportunity to decline funding where . . . the Government's high country objectives were not sufficiently met . . .''
David Parker
