Special Report7 July, 2025
Changes announced to Fish & Game this morning are another move in the Coalition Government’s handover of power to intensive farming and other polluting commercial interests, and will result in the further degradation of our rivers and freshwater, say freshwater campaigners.
Changes announced to Fish & Game this morning are another move in the Coalition Government’s handover of power to intensive farming and other polluting commercial interests, and will result in the further degradation of our rivers and freshwater, say freshwater campaigners.
Choose Clean Water spokesperson Tom Kay says the changes announced today are clearly designed to remove Fish & Game’s ability to advocate for the health of rivers.
“Fish & Game has used its statutory purpose as a strong advocate for the health of rivers across New Zealand, and as such has helped protect numerous rivers from pollution and degradation.”
“There are some things about the system that do need fixing, but this is not only about that—this is the Coalition Govt taking advantage of an opportunity to reduce Fish & Game’s influence over polluters.”
“When environmental groups, local community groups, or iwi can’t afford to legally challenge a damaging activity or poorly made decision, Fish & Game is often there to ensure waterways are protected—working on behalf of their members to protect habitat for fish. But this Government is trying to stop that.”
The Coalition has stated that Fish & Game’s advocacy functions will be “revised” so regional Fish & Game councils will only be able to take court action in relation to advocacy if explicitly approved by the New Zealand Fish & Game Council or the Minister and within a new restricted advocacy policy.
This morning’s press release from Minister for Hunting and Fishing James Meager on the changes states they will restrict the organisation’s ability to undertake court proceedings and require “Fish & Game councils to better consider the interests of other stakeholders such as farmers and the aviation sector in decision-making”.
“It’s telling that the Government has said specifically that it wants Fish & Game to better consider farming interests. Why not public health interests? Why not the interests of future generations? Why not the myriad of other commercial interests that operate in our communities?
This demonstrates that this decision is another example of the Government enabling more pollution in rivers, lakes, and drinking water sources, and the handing of more power over our water to polluting commercial interests like intensive farming.”
“We know how detrimental the influence of Ministers can be over the statutory purposes of agencies like the Department of Conservation to protect our environment, for example. This is another case of Ministers being given the power to step in and stop actions that would protect our environment.” Fish & Game led the processes to secure many Water Conservation Orders—similar to National Parks—for our rivers, protecting them for anglers and the public alike to enjoy. In 2002 they launched a large campaign against “Dirty Dairying” and the conversion of land into intensive agriculture, particularly in the South Island.
More recently, Fish & Game took up a legal challenge against ongoing extreme pollution of Southland’s waterways where dairy interests were wrongly claiming “there is no evidence of diffuse discharges from farming activities, either individually or cumulatively, causing adverse effects, including significant adverse effects on aquatic life”.
“Proponents of damaging, intensive agriculture and other major polluters are all over this Government’s decisions. This decision stinks of undue influence.”
For more information, contact Tom Kay (022) 183 2729.
It is important that all New Zealand has a say in the future of our waterways.
The commercialization of water, (any every other environmental resource), is a feature of this economic libertarian Coalition government.
“Water user” is a term now restricted to irrigation and power generation. Uses that can be given a direct economic value. This simplistic accounting misses some of the most critical water use: water is essential for all life – humans, land, and aquatic animals.
Once the decision is made to abstract water or dam rivers, that decision is irreversible as are the negative consequences.
Planting trees or funding predator control will not restore over allocated rivers.
When water, the universal solvent is polluted, it is permanently polluted. Farm Environment Plans are a sop that at best might slow the rate of pollution.
We need balance in our use of our water. Not top down command and control edicts from short term politicians who will not be around to be accountable for the consequences of their short sighted policy.
Well, what a”sleight of hand”, Minister Meager has pulled, pretending to be a friend of the outdoor public and now in the process of dismantling Fish and Game. This is a very good exposure by Choose Clean Water’s Tom Kay.
Thanks, Tom Kay, for calling attention to the destruction of Fish and Game. The sad thing is only a few retiring or retired Fish and Game employees have been able to speak out. Everyone else who disagrees would simply be fired.
I can’t help but feel part of the problem lies with F&G themselves. The many years of internal bitching and backbiting has seen them become pretty ineffective. From Johnson’s years attacking dirty-dairying – and rightly so – to today’s limp-wristed mob left them open to government intervention. Even if it is just to make them more toothless than they had rendered themselves IMHO
I’ve got no problem with Fish & Game Council reorganising itself to be more efficient. But Government is using the exercise to sneak in policies which fit its own agenda. Why would we even bother having Regional F&G Councils if they are going to be hamstrung this way?
It started with Key and perpetuated by successive governments left and right (although you can call the current mod right is beyond me) anyone standing in the way of the mighty dollar will be mown down no matter
Re Dirty Dairying – when the Crafar dairy farms were operating in the Poronui/Taharua area, the Oamaru River looked like vegetable soup. Crafar has gone and with it much of the dairying there and now… the stream is running clear again. Minister Meager your actions re F&G remind me of what Orwell said in 1984 “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” – George Orwell, 1984, Part 1, Chapter 7. History will judge you.
Take a look at the UK to see what we might have in store.
The Guardian (10 July 2025) reports that Thames Water paid some £2.5 million to managers as bonuses, using emergency loan funds that were supposed to keep the struggling company going. Incredibly, more bonuses are planned.
The loan totalled £3 billion and came from hedge funds and investors to whom Thames Water already owed large sums.
The paper notes that these creditors are now the lead contenders to take over the water business. No surprises there; when you have control of an essential resource like water it’s a money tree.
Closer to home there is the scandal involving cotton growers taking water from the Murray-Darling Basin.
For NZ anglers we must be eternally vigilant to protect waterways – there is always some bludger looking for a free lunch.
Sure there are problems within Fish and Game but they fade in comparison to governments and their so-called reforms of electricity (remember Max Bradford?),
health (remember Hipkins, Annette King and others?), railways (remember Richard Prebble?), economy (remember Roger Douglas, John Key and Bill English and Steven Joyce to name a few?) and the likes of Ardern and Robertson who were so divisive, self serving and bumbling.
Sorry to say the truth but what gives politicians the right to think they have any ability in the public interest?
Now amongst the current crop we have the likes of Chris bishop and Shane Jones who in line with Parkinson’s Law have been promoted to their level of incompetency.
Where is the accountability?
And they have the conceit and gall to think they can “reform” Fish and Game which is run at no cost to the taxpayer and much benefit to the economy, especially regional economies.
Who is pushing government? Pro-commercial interests within Fish and Game who want pheasant preserves legalised under law changes to the Wildlife Act which at the moment prohibits the selling of shooting rights which is exactly what pheasant preserves do?
Exploitation interests e.g.mining, corporate factory farming?
The settlers sought to make fishing and hunting public sports available to all under an egalitarian society unlike the UK where salmon and trout fishing and shooting is only available if you have a the fat cheque book, i.e. the wealthy upper class.
Pheasant preserves here are reported to be charging up to $3,000 a person. It is the erosion of the egalitarian character the settlers sought to establish in perpituity, that is forever.
Thank you “12 Gauge” for spelling it out about the public ownership of fish and game.
I have seen on Facebook, fish and game staff decked out in tweed knickerbockers and collar and tie, holding pheasants, looking like upper class wealthy UK snobs.
What pretentious, ignorant behaviour!
Fish and Game should be fighting tooth and nail to prevent the perversion to the UK’s feudal system which the English migrants wanted to escape from in the New Zealand colony.
There are two issues here; one is the reorganization of F&G which several reports have highlighted as absolutely necessary and the advocacy issue. F&G as it is = a croc. We anglers and hunters need to focus our oppositional efforts on the section about advocacy. It has loop holes big enough to drive a milk tanker through.
Fish and Game needs minor reorganisation, but the governance critique reads like a vegan reviewing a steakhouse. Most of the proposed changes will weaken Fish and Game’s environmental advocacy.
Yes, funding needs rationalising, and more anglers need to vote in elections. A start would be to automatically enroll all anglers who’ve purchased a full-season license. Anglers should also elect the national council. And anytime a major change is considered, all anglers should vote on it. Fish and Game has emails for every angler, so it’s extremely easy to do.
James Meager’s approach has been the opposite. He ignored our request for him to meet with us, and the “consultation” process is extremely limited in outreach to the masses of stakeholders. Mr Meager also “consulted” with staff in a way that made it impossible for them to offer their honest opinions without being fired, as Zane Moss was driven from Southland Fish and Game simply for environmental advocacy and asking for legal clarification of recent Environment and High Court cases. Meager should have solicited their and councils’ opinions anonymously, if they sought real insight. He prefers a dictatorial top-down approach with Federated Farmers, Fonterra and dairy, irrigation and banking interests calling shots from Wellington.
If these changes go through, the loyal Opposition should reverse them all in a new administration. A new government also ought to pass conflict of interest and lobbying reform legislation to ban lobbyists from elected office, including Fish and Game councils, for five years. That’s the only way to save our freshwater ecosystems and drinking water.
Federated Farmers got Moss’s scalp and are now so emboldened as to actually ban regional councils from ever engaging in advocacy or litigation that corrupt dairy and irrigation lobbyists demand from the Coalition, which governance scholars are calling the least democratic and most conflict of interest ridden in history.
Unless all license holders vote on these changes, they are totally illegitimate. Fish and Game doesn’t take a cent of taxpayer funding. So why should the government be able to muzzle it, appoint its boards, replace members and fire its staff if they do their job?
Government is a “croc” so is the Department of Conservation, yet they sit in judgement???