2 September 2008 From a little research report to a storm of protest to book launch

The saga of Ann Brower's high country tenancy research

When Lincoln University academic Dr Ann Brower, Lecturer in Public Policy, arrived in New Zealand from the United States in 2004 as a Fulbright Scholar, little did she suspect that her planned research topic and subsequent report would quickly lead her to national prominence attracting a “storm” of vilification on the one hand and praise as a brave and insightful researcher on the other.

“When I submitted my little research report to Fulbright, though entirely innocuous theoretically and legally, it caused quite a storm,” she says. “Indirectly it has led to major policy changes, two court cases and an enquiry by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment,  and directly to protests to the Fulbright organisation and to my host university, Lincoln, and personal condemnation from some of the most powerful lobby groups in the country.”

Now Dr Brower tells the story of her research and associated experiences in a book, published by Craig Potton Publishing and launched today (2 Sept 2008) in Christchurch.

Who Owns The High Country? The controversial story of tenure review in New Zealandis, in the author’s words, “the story of the rise and apparent fall of farmer domination of high country land policy in the South Island of New Zealand”.

The first half of the book is an account of her research assumptions and what their application to the tenure review issue revealed. It takes the story up to February 2006 when she submitted her research report to Fulbright.

She says that this part of the book draws on political science (interest group and administrative politics), property law, and economics to explain how and why “farmers came to capture most of the benefits of land reform   -  in land and money”. 

The book’s second half tracks a series of Cabinet minutes changing land policy and its implementation from the October 2006 decision about pastoral rents to the June and November 2007 decisions preventing privatisation of lakeside land.

It also observes the twists and turns of interest group and party politics around a landscape that is dear to New Zealanders’ hearts.   It describes the strategic manoeuvring that almost all parties engaged in to try to achieve their visions for the high country.

Finally the book predicts conditions necessary for the  policy changes to stay in place following the 2008 General Election and conditions under which farmer dominance could re-emerge.

Dr Brower says that although it is a story about the high country, it is really a book about politics.

“It’s about when and why policies can change and who is likely to benefit.”

Advance reviewers have variously described Dr Brower’s book as: “A legal thriller in which the nature of property rights takes centre stage”; A book which “gives knowledge and power to the public to write the epilogue” after “bureaucrats have fleeced New Zealanders of biodiversity, access, land and money”; “An insightful analysis of how successive governments have blundered and why the tenure review process must be fixed”; and a book for which “Ann should be congratulated for the clarity, and the integrity, of her analysis”. 

Dr Brower says that undoubtedly the interest groups which have opposed her work so far will have their own views on her book, “but as an academic my allegiance is to scholarship, theory and the letter of the law  -  not to interest groups.”

Who Owns the High Country  -  the controversial story of tenure review in New Zealandby Dr Ann Brower is published by Craig Potton Publishing and was launched today (2 Sept. 2008) at the The Christchurch Arts Centre. 

Ian Collins, Communications Group, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand.