Canterbury council's freshwater management challanged in court
The Environmental Law Initiative wants a rule in the regional plan which allows certain farming discharges as a permitted activity to be quashed. File photo.
Photo:
RNZ / Nate McKinnon
The first of two back-to-back court cases challenging the Canterbury regional council's freshwater management begins at the Christchurch High Court today.
The Environmental Law Initiative (ELI) will ask the court to quash a rule in the regional plan which allows certain farming discharges as a permitted activity.
Senior researcher Anna Sintenie said ELI will argue the rule - which allows the discharge of nutrients onto or into land to be a permitted activity in some circumstances, but can result in contaminants entering water - breaches the Resource Management Act.
She said the council should be protecting the health of Canterbury's waterways and people for generations to come, but has instead been "illegally permissive" of activities that have led to significant pollution.
The organisations will be back in the High Court the following week, as ELI seeks to have a consent for the Mayfield Hinds Valetta (MHV) irrigation scheme
deemed unlawful
.
In 2021, the council granted MHV Water Ltd a consent to discharge nitrogen over more than 58,000 hectares in the Hinds/Hekeao Plains.
Sintenie said the organisation is seeking a similar outcome as they won in 2024, when the court found the council had unlawfully granted a resource consent for the neighbouring Ashburton Lyndhurst Irrigation Ltd irrigation scheme (ALIL), and
quashed the consent
.
The regional council and ALIL have appealed the decision.
She said in the wake of the court's findings in the ALIL case - that the council's decision to grant the discharge consent breached the RMA, and that the council had failed to consider other relevant policies requiring it to avoid adverse effects on indigenous biodiversity and the "natural character" of coastal and freshwater environment - ELI took another look at the council's water management and protection.
The group will also argue the council failed to consider the potential impacts on local drinking water supplies, and should have notified the community.
It was just down to the court's timetabling that the cases had been scheduled back to back, Sintinie said.
But it was no coincidence the organisation was scrutinising the Canterbury Regional Council's decison-making, consent management and protection of freshwater.
"We've had a focus on water quality outcomes in Canterbury because we can see there's a significant nitrogen pollution issue in the region.
"We believe in this context of significant pollution, there's a high responsibility on ECan [the regional council] to be sure it's properly managing these issues."
The majority of the country's freshwater is located in Canterbury (about 70 percent), as is the bulk of the nation's irrigated land.
The council declined to comment while the cases were before the court.
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- RNZ News
The Pentagon, NZ and the new nuclear overlap
The US nuclear wing is ageing, with a hugely expensive decades-long effort underway to overhaul it. File photo. Photo: United States Department of Energy The United States is modernising its nuclear weapons command and control system, and while it is not directly involved, New Zealand will feel the effects. Top US officials, nuclear commanders and Pentagon documents say the nuclear command-control-and-communications system - NC3 - will be integrated and "overlap" with a new global mega-network of battlefield communications. The Combined Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control (CJADC2) mega-network is being built to also cover conventional weapons and all battlefield domains - land, sea, air, space and cyber - with the basic aim to speed up operations and spot threats from far away. "The two systems have to be overlapped to a great extent so that we can have integration," the US nuclear command STRATCOM told Congress in 2022 . The mega-network is seen by the US as a "once-in-a-generation modernisation of its approach to commanding military forces", with modernisation of its nuclear system seen as a matter of survival against China and Russia. At the same time, the Pentagon has adopted an aggressive strategy to engage allies and partners more in developing advanced technologies, including the mega-network. New Zealand is involved with this strategy through a growing range of exercises, experiments and agreements on land, sea and in space. The NZ Defence Force (NZDF) has been active for months in anchor CJADC2 projects for both the US Army and US Air Force. "US, allies and partners integrate for dynamic targeting kill-chain automation experiments," ran a US Air Force headline about this last year , in a report naming NZ. The NZDF signed up this year for the US Navy's main contribution to the mega-network, called Project Overmatch. An official badge for the UN Navy's Project Overmatch. Photo: Supplied / US Navy The NZ government called these "efforts to promote peace and security" that would "improve the survivability and lethality of our platforms". But the government does not acknowledge any link to the command-and-control of nuclear weapons. The defence forces were "not involved" in NC3, they said. Ministers, officials and the NZDF had no information or advice about this, RNZ was told. "Any linkages between the United States NC3 and its joint all-domain command and control strategy are a matter for the government of the United States," the defence ministry said. US authorities have talked repeatedly about the growing linkage, partly to increase resiliency, using layers of new satellites. RNZ asked the Pentagon if it had considered what that might mean for nuclear-free New Zealand. "The DOD [Department of Defence] respects the policies of our allies and partners, and routinely accounts for them in planning and cooperation," it replied. The NZ defence ministry has made one small move, carving out a non-nuclear niche for a US-led satellite-monitoring hub in Auckland. While there is no suggestion NZ actually has its hands on a nuclear device or trigger, it is subject to the same rapid technological and geopolitical changes disrupting and reshaping the world's armed forces, including the US nuclear wing that NZ shelters under. That nuclear wing is ageing, and the hugely expensive decades-long effort to overhaul it - US President Donald Trump wants to increase spending on nuclear weapons by 29 percent this year to $41 billion - will alter how NC3 works, and what it interacts with. The head of nuclear command Admiral Chas Richard said in 2022 : "It is to our benefit, where appropriate, to use our conventional command and control to add redundancy and resiliency to our nuclear command and control. "You couldn't afford to build two completely separate systems if we tried to achieve that in the real world." He told the Senate Armed Services Committee he was "very pleased that a subset of what JADC2 is doing is for nuclear command and control". The US added a 'C' at the front of JADC2 last year to reflect allies' growing engagement. A 2022 Pentagon strategy for building CJADC2 detailed five workstreams: The fourth was "integrating with Nuclear C2 and C3". "It's important to realise that JADC2 and NC3 are intertwined because, well, NC3 will operate in elements of JADC2," the head of STRATCOM Air Force General John Hyten was quoted by US defence media in 2020 . "NC3 will also operate in things that are separate from JADC2 because of the unique nature of the nuclear business, but it will operate in significant elements of JADC2," Hyten said. Prime Minister and National Security and Intelligence Minister Christopher Luxon was asked by RNZ if the government had any information linking NC3 to New Zealand. After initially sending the request to the defence ministry, his office later produced a single document, which was not relevant. Asked the same thing, Defence Minister Judith Collins' office said: "No information in scope of your request has been identified." The defence agencies also had no information on any links. But they unequivocally stated: "The New Zealand Defence Force is not involved in the United States' Nuclear Command Control and Communications" and "The Ministry of Defence has no involvement in the United States' Nuclear Command-Control-Communications." The Pentagon issued a three-line statement to RNZ: "The DOD respects the policies of our allies and partners, and routinely accounts for them in planning and cooperation. Our defence relationship with New Zealand remains strong. "We remain committed to ensuring our cooperation aligns with legal and policy frameworks." The defence ministry's OIA response said that when the government agreed to the US setting up a hub for monitoring satellites and space activity in Auckland in 2023, the ministry included a condition that the operation "does not contribute to nuclear command and control systems and that NZDF personnel will not aid or abet activity enabling possession or control over nuclear weapons". Space - and space launches - are integral to any upgrade of NC3. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in May that any military participation in space-related activities with the US was subject to "express caveats to ensure that it does not contribute to nuclear command and control systems". Both efforts - NC3 and CJADC2 - are hugely complex and expensive. The US feels it has no choice, with its lawmakers and think-tanks increasingly expressing the idea that it faces an existential threat like never before. "The United States will face two nuclear peer adversaries for the first time," said a 2023 congressional report , delivered by only the second Strategic Posture Commission to report back since 2009. "Their projected capabilities magnify how complex this competition could become, and combine to pose an existential threat to the United States and its allies and partners." China has more than doubled its arsenal of nuclear warheads in recent years to an estimated 600, heading for more than 1000 by 2030 . At the same time, Beijing is adding non-nuclear weapons that will be able to attack in new ways in space, where nuclear command has a lot of its tech. "New Russian and Chinese weapons make Washington's nuclear command structure vulnerable to attack," the vice chair of the non-partisan Commission on the National Defence Strategy Eric Edelman wrote early this month . "These emerging capabilities raise a spectre that the US government has not had to face for at least 35 years: The prospect of nuclear decapitation." The US has about 3700 warheads . The problem is not the scale, but the age of the nuclear 'wing': Four-decade-old Minuteman missiles, superannuitant nuclear bombers, and systems that till a few years ago were running on 1980s floppy discs . The US fleet of nuclear-armed submarines is stretched. The parts of the system relied on to detect enemy launches of nukes, track missiles and launch an attack are also old. Trump, like presidents before him, is dependent on NC3 for what he knows about a threat and how he responds, and NC3 remains highly dependent on a few big, old satellites. In March, US lawmakers backed calls by their nuclear and space commanders to push on with upgrades across the nuclear system. "We are talking about being strong enough to prevent a nuclear war, and nothing could be more important," Republican senator Roger Wicker, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said at the hearing . That strength will be impacted by Trump's proposed 'golden dome' defence shield against nuclear and conventional missiles. Some analysts say it could actually cut nuclear stockpiles by reducing the perceived threat in Washington, but others say it could fuel a space arms race . Senior Pentagon leaders have for years been saying that their systems are not up to the task, and not just the nuclear ones. They stated their "existing command and control architecture is insufficient to meet the demands of the 2018 National Defence Strategy", the Congressional Research Service said in 2022. The response has been to embark on building platforms "to connect sensors from all of the military services - Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Space Force - into a single network", in a "once-in-a-generation modernisation". The mega-network plan predates Trump and its buildout as planned would outlast him. Some defence analysts have expressed doubts it might be too ambitious, congressional reports show. In its statement to RNZ, the Pentagon did not address whether work on CJADC2 was changing at all under the Trump White House. However, a US commander in March called the network "incredibly important, probably [the] number one priority for the United States Army for modernisation". "We will never achieve our warfighting effectiveness if we don't have a command-and-control network that enables our commanders to execute mission command at the point of need on the battlefield. Period, full stop." The work on both nuclear and conventional sides picked up after the US Space Force was set up in 2019, with the pace increasing even more under the recent strategy to work with allies more. That work is being seen as increasingly important has been this year with the rapidly deteriorating geopolitical environment, which that governments from Wellington to London have cited as the main reason to ramp up defence spending. At the same time, Ukraine has ushered in huge changes to warfighting tech and tactics, with the 'conventional' weapons stable expanding to include very unconventional hypersonic missiles, drones, electromagnetic jammers and lasers. The US Space Force laid out in March a package of six new space weapons it wants to underwrite its aggressive new posture. But anything it can attack with in space represents a potential threat to its own command-and-control networks. The New Zealand government has committed to spending a growing proportion for defence on emerging technologies. Collins, the defence and space minister, repeated this at a recent security summit in Singapore. At the same summit , US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said China was "credibly preparing to potentially use military force to alter the balance of power" in Asia. On the summit sidelines, he also called on Australia to ramp up its defence spending even further , "as soon as possible". China accused Hegseth of trying to engineer a Cold War "bloc confrontation" between it and other countries in the region. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. Photo: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP In an open letter to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, former political leaders Helen Clark and Don Brash, among others, said the country was in danger of taking sides, with the US versus China. But Luxon pushed back on Monday, saying times had changed, and New Zealand had "deep engagement and cooperation" with both countries. "We will make our own assessment based on our own needs as to how we navigate those relationships," Luxon told Morning Report . Non-nuclear New Zealand finds itself in an unusual position compared to its partners in the Five Eyes intelligence group - the US, Canada, UK and Australia - and compared to others in the Indo-Pacific region. It is a defence minnow, but it is party to intelligence few others get. It is an enthusiastic participant in efforts to build the CJADC2 mega-network, papers show, but has limited high-tech of its own to add, at least until the new spending on defence kicks in. Its armed forces have no space assets, but hosted more space launches than Russia last year. It is very keen to secure international space business. "We offer a global launchpad for all things space," Collins told a space symposium outside the US Space Force base in Colorado in April, an OIA showed, but the country also has four-decade-old nuclear-free laws. It added a new law in 2017 forbidding rocket launches that "contribute to nuclear weapons programmes or capabilities". The US military began talks this year with New Zealand and several other countries that can launch or want to, about using their spaceports in future, RNZ revealed last month . While both CJADC2 and NC3 would require many more satellites, it remains unclear if these would be allowed to be launched outside the US, given the extra security settings on anything nuclear. This remains classified, along with many other details of how conventional and nuclear systems integrate, although STRATCOM has stressed the highest-security parts of NC3 would be kept separate. Partial separation was vital, said leading nuclear system analysts at the Atlantic Council last year. "Risk tolerance for NC3 systems is understandably non-existent; there can be no uncertainty in the ability of the United States to positively command and control its nuclear forces at any given moment," wrote Peter Hays and Sarah Mineiro . The Pentagon in the US. Photo: DANIEL SLIM / AFP Secrets aside, STRATCOM nuclear command has been clear about expanding the 'tent' of its command-and-control. "You have to have that interface back and forth," General Hyten said to defence media , when talking about the technology. It has also been transparent about the role of allies. "The US and our allies are trailblazing upgrades and capitalising on new technologies to maintain credible and effective deterrence," said the head of STRATCOM General Anthony Cotton last year . The two-pronged integration between technologies and allies is charted across multiple strategies, plans and administrations. "We seek to network our efforts across domains, theatres, and the spectrum of conflict to ensure that the US military, in close cooperation with the rest of the US government and our Allies and partners, makes the folly and costs of aggression very clear," said former President Joe Biden's Deputy Secretary of Defence Dr Kathleen Hicks . The CJADC2 mega-network now involves more than three dozen militaries. The first satellites to support it were launched last year from America's spaceports. The NZDF has engaged in US-led ground, air and naval experiments and exercises since at least the start of 2024, with a primary objective to build out the network. An exercise in March -called Convergence Capstone 5 - was "a critical proving ground" for a networked fighting force, the NZDF said . "It puts us at the cutting edge of military experimentation." It had observers for the first time in 2024 at a Global Information Domination Exercise (GIDE), linked to Project Convergence. The 2023 Talisman Sabre US-Australia bilateral the NZDF was invited to let the partners from 16 countries communicate on one system for the first time. "We've never set up this kind of construct before," a US officer told media . For Talisman Sabre 2025, while the NZDF is taking just one drone of its own, it gets to work with the US's much bigger and more deadly fleet, on the eve of the Pentagon rolling out its Replicator strategy for tens of thousands of drones across the Indo-Pacific. Interoperability and modernisation were the key, said defence force reports, released under the OIA. A "priority for experimentation is highly likely to remain focussed on sensor integration and data sharing/availability", it said about Project Convergence. Under the US Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System, the NZDF - along with Japan, Germany and France - took part in targeting accelerated by AI last year. Other experiments took place to connect US operators with the Five Eyes Battle Labs , also known as the Combined Federated Battle Laboratories Network. For Project Overmatch, the US Navy had by 2021 been "experimenting in a way that allows us to essentially pass any data on any network to the warfighter". When the NZDF signed a project agreement to join Overmatch along with other Five Eyes partners in February, the Pentagon called the move "historic". In Project Overmatch - under the slogan "Decide first, win" - faster satellite-to-gun connections have so far been added to three aircraft carrier groups in the Pacific. Collins sought in May to play down joining Overmatch, a move that went unannounced and was only revealed by RNZ . "The NZDF routinely engages partners in joint efforts to promote peace and security, many of which are not announced or publicised," Collins told Parliament in response to a question from the Greens. "Project Overmatch is part of the US Combined Joint Command and Control strategy," she added. "The NZDF signed a Project Overmatch programme arrangement to explore ways in which our maritime forces can interoperate with partner nations, connect securely despite the actions of adversaries, and improve the survivability and lethality of our platforms." However, the minister [ttps:// also said] she had received no aides-mémoire, briefings, memos, notes, reports or any other advice about Overmatch. The NZDF joined Overmatch a few weeks before its $12 billion defence capability plan was unveiled by Collins. The government recently restated its anti-nuclear credentials made world-famous by former Prime Minister David Lange's riposte in an Oxford Union debate in 1987: "I can smell the uranium on your breath." In a speech in early 2024, Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs Todd McClay warned the world was in a "deep slide" over nuclear weapons . "Investments to modernise arsenals and, in some concerning cases, increase arsenals, is likely to lead to the further entrenchment of nuclear weapons for decades to come," McClay told a disarmament conference. "And mistrust has grown. "And in the absence of any discernible progress to disarm, the seeming incentive persists for the 'have-nots' to join the 'haves' and acquire these terrible weapons." McClay reiterated the country's longstanding calls for full implementation of the treaties on non-proliferation and on prohibition of nuclear weapons. McClay was not available for an interview for this story. Both CJADC2 and NC3 depend on what happens in space, and Hegseth has said space would become the most important battle domain. New satellites to warn against nuclear attack are scheduled to be launched later this year, a step towards replacing a 14-year-old system called SBIRS, a space-based infrared system. Hundreds of small satellites in two layers are also going up to form the "backbone" of CJADC2, US Space Force said. This 'Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture' (PWSA) is providing big business for several large defence contractors. "Proliferation" has become the Pentagon buzzword, a strategy of spreading out technology, especially in space, to make it much harder for an enemy to register a knockout blow. Another recent strategy is to contract commercial space companies to help it achieve "responsive" launch - fast turnaround launches in case satellites do get knocked out. The NZDF has a tiny space footprint but is aiming to make it bigger, with American help. Its first space payloads - which went up this year and last year - are within the Five Eyes newly "federated space system" and under a bigger project by the US Navy to achieve laser-fast satellite communications Collins denied the experiments had anything to do with the Project Overmatch: "The Tui and Korimako payloads are for research purposes only and have no direct utility for military operations," she said. The NZDF had said earlier: "These experiments will generate NZDF knowledge to drive future military space operations." The integration and overlap of conventional and nuclear command-control-and-communications systems is going ahead, official records from within the US show. The impetus to do more faster is growing. "US nuclear planners... need to plan for the possibility of a combined Sino-Russian nuclear attack," Edelman said this month. His opinion piece on the website Foreign Policy was headlined 'America's latest problem: A three-way nuclear race'. "The recent joint Chinese-Russian strategic bomber patrols near Alaska demonstrate that this is not just a theoretical concern," he wrote. While America's defence doctrine does not rule out a first strike, its stress has always been on deterrence. The Pentagon and lawmakers are agreed their old nuclear systems do not provide the best deterrent, and must be modernised. They have also looked at command-and-control on all fronts, arrived at the same conclusion and came up with a joined-up approach - joined-up tech, with joined-up allies and partners. A subsection of a 2024 Pentagon report , headlined 'Optimising innovation cooperation with allies and partners', warned the US was not adequately integrating key allies and partners, and it recommended that the "DoD should leverage these strengths through new and innovative mechanisms of cooperation". The Nuclear Posture Review in 2022, in a section on the Indo-Pacific, stated: "We view the expertise, capabilities, and resources of our allies and partners as 'force multipliers' for strengthening deterrence." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
2 hours ago
- RNZ News
America's foreign student fiasco
Harvard University's graduation day takes place amid escalating tensions between the university and the Trump administration. Photo: Getty via AFP One of the world's best universities, a magnet for the globe's brightest brains, is under attack by the Trump administration. And while Harvard is fighting various funding restrictions and bans on foreign student visas, harsher policies on America's borders are creating fear from returning students that they could be arrested by immigration officers and jailed or deported. International students are big money-makers for universities worldwide - in New Zealand they pay four times the amount in fees as domestic students. "We could be doing well while doing good," says the chief economist at the policy think-tank The New Zealand Initiative, Dr Eric Crampton. "It's amazing that America's throwing all this away. "We aren't the destination market for the best students in the world. But if the place that is the destination for the best students in the world suddenly says 'we don't want them any more' - my God we'd better be ready for that," he tells The Detail . Crampton is Canadian, but spent time in the US on a student visa so knows what it's like to study there. He's also taught at Canterbury University and has experience with exchange students. He says the American administration has now basically put every student visa under threat, with erratic threats coming from the President, whether over funding or threats to Chinese students on the basis that "they're all spies or something". Trump's move to bar international students from Harvard by blocking their visas has itself now been blocked by a court order , but the situation remains uncertain. At the same time foreign students are getting nervous about leaving the country and trying to get back in, with reports about people randomly getting arrested at the border. The hit to the US economy is expected to cost billions in revenue, and has been described as an "anti-intellectual spree". "When you live in America on something like a student visa, every interaction with the state you're reminded that you're less than an American. Even in 2002 it was very clear that you are there by their sufferance. "It would be awful being there now on a student visa because just imagine it ... you'd be paying $US50,000 per year in international tuition fees, maybe you've already paid for two years of study and you're coming towards the end of it ... and you've got two more years ahead of you ... if they cancel your visa you've wasted $100,000 and two years. "If you're at a place like Harvard, people wouldn't hold it against you, you could continue your studies elsewhere. People would say 'well, he was admitted to Harvard, he must be really good', but if you're at a mid-tier US university - which is still better than anything New Zealand has - you'll have sunk two years' worth of study and $100,000 worth of cost, and you won't be able to finish your degree. "It feels like the kind of spot where New Zealand could help. We've always been able to accommodate students on international exchange. We could make it really easy for students to come in that way." Universities New Zealand chief executive Chris Whelan says New Zealand is nearly back up to pre-Covid numbers of foreign students, with our eight universities having about 20 thousand full time equivalent students between them. "International students help, but they're just one of a number of different mechanisms that universities are looking to for making payroll and keeping lights on," he says. "We don't want to grow too far ... we want international education to be a genuinely quality and value proposition for both domestic students - giving them the ability to rub shoulders with people from different cultures - but also for the international students, to give them a genuine international experience. "But if any student did want to, or was forced to, discontinue their studies in the US, there are places like New Zealand that I think would welcome them and would make it as easy as possible for them to get here." Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here . You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter .
RNZ News
2 hours ago
- RNZ News
New Zealand sanctions two Israeli ministers over Gaza comments
Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone New Zealand has banned two extremist Israeli politicians from travelling to the country becase of comments about the war in Gaza that the Foreign Minister says "actively undermine peace and security". New Zealand joins Australia, Canada, the UK and Norway in imposing the sanctions on Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Foreign Minister Winston Peters said they were targeted towards two individuals, rather than the Israeli government. "Our action today is not against the Israeli people, who suffered immeasurably on October 7 [2023] and who have continued to suffer through Hamas' ongoing refusal to release all hostages. Nor is it designed to sanction the wider Israeli government." The two ministers were "using their leadership positions to actively undermine peace and security and remove prospects for a two-state solution", Peters said. "Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have severely and deliberately undermined that by personally advocating for the annexation of Palestinian land and the expansion of illegal settlements, while inciting violence and forced displacement." Israeli right-wing Knesset member Itamar ben Gvir (L) and Bezalel Smotrich. Photo: Maya Alleruzzo / POOL / AFP The sanctions were consistent with New Zealand's approach to other foreign policy issues, he said. "New Zealand has also targeted travel bans on politicians and military leaders advocating violence or undermining democracy in other countries in the past, including Russia, Belarus and Myanmar." New Zealand had been a long-standing supporter of a two-state solution, Peters said, which the international community was also overwhelmingly in favour of. "New Zealand's consistent and historic position has been that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are a violation of international law. Settlements and associated violence undermine the prospects for a viable two-state solution. "The crisis in Gaza has made returning to a meaningful political process all the more urgent. New Zealand will continue to advocate for an end to the current conflict and an urgent restart of the Middle East Peace Process." Israel's foreign minister, Gideon Saar, said the move was "outrageous" and the government would hold a special meeting early next week to decide how to respond to the "unacceptable decision". His comments were made while attending the inauguration of a new Israeli settlement on Palestinian land. Peters is currently in Europe for the sixth Pacific-France Summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Nice. - Additional reporting by Reuters
