Greens won't back farmers no matter what they say

Simon drove and flew 1,000 kilometres from the South Island to Wellington. Not to argue. Not to score political points. Just to meet the Greens and say: come see it for yourself.

Come to the farm. Look at the pest control. Look at the fencing. Look at the restoration work happening right beside conservation land. The work that never makes a press release but keeps the system upright.

The Greens were polite. Warm, even. Non-offensive in person, as they usually are. But they won't vote with National on the Conservation Amendment Bill. Not now. Not ever. Simon wasted his time, his fuel, and a day he could have spent doing actual work on the land.

Watch the full episode below

The invitation that changes nothing

This is how the Conservation Amendment Bill debate has collapsed. Farmers like Simon and Richard are offering direct evidence. Come down, they say. Walk the river valleys. See the pristine forest with a dozen beef cattle grazing underneath. See how economic opportunity and conservation exist side by side. See the land that's been locked up for 20 years and is now overrun with wilding pines and weeds.

The Greens won't take them up on it. They'll nod. They'll listen. They'll say the right things. Then they'll go back to Wellington and oppose the bill anyway.

It's not about evidence anymore. It's about trust. And the Greens do not trust National, do not trust farmers, and will not shift from their ideological position no matter what the ground truth shows.

The debate that isn't happening

Steve Abel, the Greens' agriculture spokesperson, met Simon in the Beehive. The conversation was civil. But civility doesn't mean agreement. The Greens have already decided this bill is dangerous. They believe it weakens safeguards, opens the door to commercial pressure, and risks turning conservation into a business.

Farmers see something completely different. They see a 40-year-old system that can't keep up. They see 8.6 million hectares of conservation land going backwards because the Department of Conservation doesn't have the resources to manage it. They see weeds spreading, pests moving, and wetlands deteriorating while approvals crawl through layers of bureaucracy.

Richard, another South Island farmer, put it plainly: one DOC staffer told him the department has 15 per cent of the funding it needs to look after the entire estate. Fifteen per cent. The rest is neglect dressed up as protection.

The Conservation Amendment Bill was meant to modernize that system. Faster decisions. Less red tape. More flexibility to deal with different types of land in different ways. It wasn't about mining national parks or intensively farming unique landscapes. It was about recognizing that locking land up and walking away is not management.

But the Greens won't hear it. Labour won't either. Political lines have been drawn, and they will not move.

The farmers who see it every day

Simon and Richard farm next to the DOC estate. They see the difference daily. On one side of the fence: grazing land that's been managed for 150 years. On the other: retired conservation land that's been locked up for 20 years and is now smothered in weeds.

Simon showed a photo. It's not AI. It's not edited. It's a fence line running down a hillside. One side is clear. The other is chaos. Wilding pines. Gorse. Broom. Horanium. Introduced species tearing through land that was supposed to revert to native bush.

That's what happens when you lock it up and leave it. That's what the Greens are defending.

There are already 468 grazing concessions on conservation land. This isn't new. Farmers have been doing this work for decades. The bill was supposed to make the process less expensive, less burdensome, less slow. It was supposed to recognise that farmers and shepherds out there maintaining the land are part of the solution, not the problem.

But the political class in Wellington doesn't trust them. And the Greens certainly don't.

What was lost before it started

National has already backed down on parts of the bill. The land swap and disposal clauses were pulled after public backlash. That was disappointing, but not fatal. The real problem is the government never sold the bill properly in the first place.

National repeated its mistake from a decade ago. They let the narrative get away from them. They let opponents frame the debate as: National wants to mine pristine conservation land. That claim is rubbish. But it stuck. And once it stuck, the bill was on the defensive.

Now farmers are left doing the talking. They shouldn't have to. This is a policy that should have been easy to defend. A 40-year-old system that everyone agrees is broken. An underfunded department that can't keep up. A conservation estate that's declining despite hundreds of millions in taxpayer funding.

But National dropped the ball. And the Greens moved in, framed the argument, and won the day.

What's the plan now? The Greens oppose the bill but offer no alternative. No policy. No solution. Just opposition. The conservation estate will keep going backwards. The weeds will keep spreading. The pests will keep moving. And the taxpayer will keep footing the bill.

Simon invited Steve Abel to come down and see it. He's more than welcome, Simon said. Any of them are. But they won't come. And if they do, it won't change anything.

The Full Podcast is below