Apology demanded over council ‘fishing expedition’

Media-shy businessman Gary Rooney is demanding the withdrawal of a formal warning issued to his company after an investigation into ECan chair Peter Scott. He’d also like an apology.
“We are investigating and considering our options carefully,” Rooney tells Newsroom.
In May, ECan – Canterbury’s regional council – announced Scott would step aside as chair after an investigation was launched into claims he’d made a month earlier on NewstalkZB, that his farm was “operating illegally”. (Scott’s comment was designed to explain significant delays in the council’s consent processing.)
The problem, according to Scott, was he was waiting for a licence to occupy Crown land from Land Information New Zealand, so he could expand irrigation on his 67-hectare farm, just south of the Opihi River, in South Canterbury. Another complicating factor, which emerged later, was Scott had sold his farm to Rooney Farms Ltd, owned by Rooney.
The results of the $93,000 investigation, undertaken by an unnamed compliance officer from a North Island council, were made public in July. It was found the farm, on Kerrytown Rd, was being operated without a land-use consent.
Formal warnings were issued to Scott, Rooney Farms Ltd, and farm lessee John Chapman. No action was taken against Rooney personally.
While there are no financial penalties associated with formal warnings, they become important if enforcement action is taken in the future.
Rooney owns a group of companies involved in various activities, including earthmoving, farming, and irrigation. One of the South Island’s top landowners, he generally avoids speaking to the media.
He’s crying foul because the issues at the Kerrytown Rd farm pre-dated his ownership.
Under what’s called plan change 5 to Canterbury’s land and water plan, certain farms were required to have consents to continue their operations. The six-month grace period expired in August 2019. It was only in October 2022 that a consent application was made.
Rooney Farms bought the land on March 31, 2023, and farming has continued.
“There was no way for us to know that the farm had not been registered with ECan,” Rooney says. “This was simply a situation missed by the existing farm owner back in 2019.”
If anyone should have known the farm wasn’t registered, it should have been the regulator, ECan, which was processing the consent, Rooney says. “As far as we were aware and ECan was aware, until the investigation, the farm was operating compliantly prior to and after our purchase. It still operates as such, hence why they cannot prosecute anyone.”
When did ECan advised Rooney Farms it was operating without consent? Operations director Stephen Hall says it issued a notice on May 3 of this year advising the company of its intention to investigate potential breaches of the Resource Management Act (RMA), relating to farming activities, including irrigation.
Rooney Farms Ltd (RFL) was issued a formal warning on July 15, in a letter written by Valyn Barrett, ECan’s team leader of enforcement and investigations.
The following day, Rooney Farms general counsel Lisa Smith responded to ECan’s lawyer, Philip Maw, saying the company had been “strenuously requesting advice from council as to the specific allegations”. “Council has repeatedly refused to provide that clarification.”
The investigator uncovered a minor technical issue which would be imminently rectified, Smith wrote. “It is unclear how council expect RFL to ‘comply’ with the formal warning.”
The outstanding consents were sorted within days of each other – and just a few weeks after the formal warning was issued.
Land Information New Zealand confirmed Rooney Farms was issued a licence to occupy Crown land on August 2. Three days later, an independent hearings commissioner granted Rooney Farms a land-use consent, and a variation to the property’s irrigation consent. Both applications were originally lodged by ECan chair Scott’s company Dirragh Farm Ltd
Smith, of Rooney Farms, said in her July 16 letter that ECan couldn’t prosecute anyone over the alleged breach because of the 12-month statute of limitations under the RMA. (When Scott’s company applied for consent in October 2022 – 26 months after the grace period expired – the regulator had a year to take action.)  
The formal warning was “unfair, unreasonable and excessive”, Smith wrote.
Rooney tells Newsroom: “ECan was always on a fishing expedition purely motivated to divert the negative attention it was receiving from day one on to others, and ECan had no real reason to investigate me or my company.”
ECan’s decision-making “is not free from political influence or organisational self-interest”, he says.
Hall, of ECan, pushes back, saying all aspects of the investigation were done at a staff level “with no political involvement or influence”. “This includes the decision to investigate, the process followed, including use of staff not associated with Environment Canterbury, and compliance decisions made.”
Was it a fishing expedition? “The investigation identified the extent of compliance breach,” Hall says. “To identify this required investigation of the three parties involved with the land concerned.”
However, what responsibility, if any, did Rooney’s company have for the consent, we asked ECan, and, therefore, was a formal warning fair? Hall says: “We stand by the decision to issue a formal warning to Rooney Farms.”
Scott, who has resumed his position as ECan chair, says: “I co-operated fully with the inquiry and I am now pleased to be able to put this issue behind me. I will be making no further comment on this matter.”
Last month, The Press newspaper reported land owned by Chapman was linked to a costly water contamination incident in Timaru. Chapman leased the Kerrytown Rd farm from 2019 to 2023.
ECan has been in the spotlight over recent years. In June, one of its former employees, who penned a damning report into the management of the Rakaia River, said the council was as a “catastrophic failure” on water regulation.
An important aspect of ECan’s enforcement against Rooney Farms was the sale agreement conditions it had with Dirragh Farm.
The July 15 letter from Barrett said: “Rooney Farms Ltd is aware of this situation as it has withheld a percentage of the purchase price until the vendor rectifies it.”
Rooney calls this “a red-herring and irrelevant”. 
“We did not know about this technicality when buying the farm. The small amount of money retained in the lawyer’s trust account was to ensure that all of the consents, not just the consent in process, were transferred to us (e.g. the water consent).  
“The buyer always pays the full amount and the lawyers hold the moneys due to the seller until they have met the sale conditions. This is normal practice. For ECan to rely on this as evidence of guilt is absurd.”
Newsroom asked ECan if it stood by its claim the withheld money was evidence Rooney was aware of the non-compliance. It didn’t respond to that question. (ECan took eight days to respond to our questions for this story.)
Rooney accuses ECan of holding him to a higher standard than it holds itself.
He’s referring to a joint request, made by Rooney Farms and Dirragh Farm in June of last year, for land-use consents and applications to be transferred to the new owner. The transfer was done in June of this year, shortly before Rooney was interviewed by the independent investigator – “following the recognition of an administrative error by the council”.
This shows the value of property sale agreement conditions, Rooney says. “ECan should acknowledge their failings in this process.”
Newsroom’s first question to ECan was: what were ECan’s failures in the investigation? It didn’t answer that question, and some others, saying they were “very subjective”.
In response to Rooney’s request for the formal warning to be withdrawn, and for ECan to make an apology, Hall says: “Environment Canterbury is comfortable with the actions taken to identify possible non-compliance through the investigation and the response to the findings.”