I may raise this question with Mr Hubbard also on Friday night

A surprisingly fair report from RNZ, Taranaki farmer ordered to pay $180k wonders how he’ll survive:

A Taranaki farmer, who has been ordered to pay $180,000 over his objection to the Mt Messenger Bypass route on State Highway 3, says the decision will ruin him.

The Environment Court awarded the costs to the Minister for Land Information after earlier ruling 11 hectares of Tony and Debbie Pascoe’s farm required for the project could be purchased under the Public Works Act.
…
In his decision, Judge Brian Dwyer acknowledged the Pascoes “had little or no money” but found that the ministry’s claim for 33 percent of its legal costs was reasonable.

Rich farmers eh? The reason they objected was that it wasn’t just any 11ha:

The Pascoes farm two blocks of land totalling about 250ha on the northern side of Mt Messenger. The bypass will spilt the farm in half, with 155ha in the Mangapēpeke Valley directly in the path of the new road.

They were initially offered $600k, plus a contribution toward building a new home on a block they owned nearby, and the whole farm was valued at $1.4m, so that sounds like a good deal, but it also seems that punishment is involved for not taking it, which smacks of Mafia-style thinking.

But the kicker is the deal given to a nearby property owner:

Ngāti Tama exchanged 20ha of Treaty settlement land required for the Mt Messenger bypass project for a 120ha coastal property, a cultural compensation payment of about $7.7m and an environmental programme including pest management in perpetuity on 3650ha of its rohe – costing $750,000 annually.

Must be nice to be Iwi in the 21st century under a National coalition government.

Must.
Be.
Nice.

By contrast, being a simple old, single property owner with no Iwi and no Indigenous blood? Well the message is basically “screw you”.

I may raise this question with Mr Hoggard this Friday night, just to add to my Net Zero-Carbon Credit question and the one about “disproportionate bureaucracy” in rural water schemes.