ELLIOT IKILEI: District plan means farmers will be extorted by the iwi mafia

Rural New Zealand is under siege from a planning system that is taking a leaf out of the Sopranos' book and turning productive farmland into a maze of red tape and mafia stand over tactics.

Farmers in Gore are staring down a new reality that before they dig a silage pit, build a shed, fix a farm track, or dozens of other everyday farming activities, resource consents must be assessed against Ngāi Tahu cultural values like mauri (life force), wairua (spiritual connections), whakapapa (relationships between all life forms), and utu (restoring balance).

It is a fork-out or fail to get consents situation.

Remember when 'consultation' meant talking to your neighbours and the council?

Now it's pay Ngai Tahu to assess whether your earthworks harm the spiritual essence of the soil.

This will only mean costs ballooning, delays mounting, and uncertainty killing investment.

This is ridiculous and unfair. Farmers aren't anti-culture or anti-Māori, but they're anti-being squeezed by a system that turns cultural values into a revenue stream and a veto.

It's not partnership when one side can withhold approval until you pay up. Gore's Māori Cultural Values rules have turned routine consents into a paid consultation gauntlet district-wide, no escape, fees included.

How is a farmer meant to figure out the wairua of their land and why should they have to? It is private land! In New Zealand we have something called 'private property rights'.

Farmers have already been fighting and raised hell over the Gore District Council's original plan to slap a "Site of Significance to Māori" label on the entire district.

The council backed down following this initial feedback... sort of....

They scrapped the blanket 'Site of Significance to Māori' tag, but replaced it with a new Māori Cultural Values chapter that does basically the same thing.

This is a warning sign for farmers everywhere. District plans nationwide are layering cultural value rules on top of SNAs, biodiversity overlays, and hazards, creating a complex web where farmers lose real control over their own land.

Farmers aren't imagining it. They are being gaslit. One layer after another stacks up until ordinary land use needs multiple permissions. A single paddock can now sit under biodiversity overlays, cultural value provisions, landscape rules, hazard zones, and more. It's a slow choke on property rights.

Māori farmers won't be exempt either. They'll have to cough up for iwi assessments too. It is a mafia racket, not a matter of cultural respect.

He iwi tahi tātou / We are one people,

Elliot Ikilei is spokesperson for Hobson's Pledge