Greenpeace should lose charitable status - Feds

The calls follow the activist group’s publicity stunt in which protesters gave Gore’s brown trout stature cartoon-style crosses over its eyes.

Greenpeace also attached a sign to the town’s ‘Welcome to Gore’ sign, labelling the town as ‘where dirty dairy wrecked the water’.

Greenpeace Aotearoa says it’s actions were a way of spotlighting what it says is a drinking water crisis in the town and the role it claims the dairy industry has had in it.

Will Appelbe, spokesperson for Greenpeace, says the dairy industry has wrecked Gore’s drinking water and put people’s health at risk due to nitrate contamination.

“Gore’s giant brown trout statue is now a beacon of the industry’s pollution of drinking water,” Appelbe says.

Now, Federated Farmers Southland president, Jason Herrick says the group needs to be held accountable for “repeated illegal activity and the spread of harmful misinformation”.

“How can they be recognized as a charity when they’re breaking all kinds of laws trespassing on private property, vandalizing public property, and intimidating the community?” he asks.

“Last night’s vandalism of the world-famous trout statue in Gore reinforces why these activists need to lose their status as a charity,” Herrick says. “I think it’s a total abuse of charitable status.”

He says that Greenpeace’s actions are an attempt to divide the rural community and spread anti-farming propaganda.

“These activists are total cowards who are slinking around in the shadows vandalising property under the cover of darkness," Herrick says.

Federated Farmers has previously called for the Government to immediately strip Greenpeace of its charitable status after the group illegally occupied Port Taranaki.

Feds argues that charitable status within New Zealand is intended to support organisations that advance public benefit through education, relief of poverty, and other recognized charitable purposes.

Under the Charities Act, organisations need to operate for the public good and should not primarily serve political or advocacy purposes.

Herrick says that Greenpeace’s activities are clear evidence that the organization no longer meets those criteria.

"It’s become little more than an extreme activist group that’s disrupting legitimate businesses and spreading harmful misinformation - repeatedly and deliberately,” he says.

In April, Feds lodged a formal complaint with Charities Services in April, requesting a formal inquiry into Greenpeace’s conduct and eligibility for charitable status.

A copy of that request was also sent to Community and Voluntary Sector Minister Louise Upston and Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke Van Velden.

The complaint focuses on Greenpeace’s repeated involvement in premeditated unlawful protest activity, including the 2024 protests at Fonterra’s Te Rapa dairy factory. That protest saw seven individuals arrested.

"We urge Charities Services to act decisively on our existing complaint and strip Greenpeace of its charitable status quickly," Herrick says.

Herrick says it’s not just Greenpeace that needs to be held accountable for how it’s operating as a charity.

"I think Charities Services and the Government need to be held accountable too and answer some tough, but fair, questions about how this rort of the rules is being allowed to continue.

"There is absolutely no way Greenpeace should be allowed to constantly break the law and still be recognised as a charity."