Two of the Commissioners, one a retired Environment Court judge, the other a highly respected planner, along with three HRC councillors made the final decisions in late 2010.
Federated Farmers, Fonterra and Horticulture New Zealand say they have no choice but to be involved in Environment Court hearings on some aspects of the One Plan because of appeals by opponents of the Plan as decided on by the Commissioners. Those appellants include Fish and Game, the Department of Conservation and Horizons itself.
Federated Farmers has set up a special 'fighting fund' to fight appeals through the Environment Court to effectively defend the document produced by the Commissioners. Feds says members could, at a pinch, have lived with the final document but say some of the opposing groups want the original notified version of plan that was thrown out by the Commissioners or amendments to it that the Commissioners did not accept.
This action by HRC, which has spent large sums hiring the independent commissioners, has been kindly described by some parties as 'interesting' and by others as bizarre. They point to a recent Environment Court case in Queenstown where the judge said public confidence in the council was 'better maintained if it supported its earlier decision'.
Some people are also concerned that one of the commissioners (an HRC Councillor) who adjudicated on the final plan, was on the council committee which decided the revised position on parts of its own plan.
But Council CEO Michael McCartney has defended this move saying 'her presence on the committee was designed to 'give consistency to council decisions'.
Despite these criticisms HRC is not backing down and is defending its decision to revise some parts of its own plan through the appeal process. According to McCartney, about 75% of concerns about the final plan have been resolved through the mediation process.
"The council position was that through mediation, it would support the 'intent' of those original decisions however there is more than one party arguing the issues. Once the mediation process is over and you can't get consensus the parties call their expert witnesses to present their evidence to the Court which is where we are at now," he says.
McCartney claims it is not uncommon that expert witnesses are at odds with the findings of commissioners which open the door for decisions to go to a costly Environment Court hearing.
He's also defended the move to allow a current staff member to present evidence on behalf of HRC, despite the fact that the same individual prepared the submission on behalf of Fish and Game in 2007 on the One Plan. McCartney says he has complete faith in the individual and that New Zealand is a small place where people have multiple careers.
"We are not anti-farming, we are not playing into anyone's hands. We went into mediation with all the best intentions to reach agreement on different ends of the spectrum. We haven't reached agreement on all matters so now it's for the court to decide. In the mediation process we are just one of the parties," says McCartney.
HRC says the One Plan is tracking to cost about $10 million. Some say that figure is conservative and that when the time and legal bills of all the parties are added up, the true cost could be in the order of $15million.
