The court case was about road access. The economic dispute was an argument over revenue from guided tours.
Having leased to Waipa District Council some 23 hectares of land within the Maungatautari Ecological Island south of Cambridge, trustees of Maungatautari 4G subsequently ran an unsuccessful decades long campaign against Council support for guided tours run over their land.
A charitable trust known as Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust has built and maintained over the last two decades a 43 kilometre predator-proof fence on the mountain’s northern slopes, establishing a wildlife reserve to protect native birds and tuatara. Maori-owned land is included within the reserve.
To generate revenue, the Maungatautari Trust established a programme of guided tours with its starting point at the end of a local access road: Tari Road. Local Maori objected to the Trust’s commercial operations.
To encourage payment by eco-tourists, the Trust obtained Council consent to fence part of Tari Road and to install a turnstile, directing walkers towards a building advertising its tours. Council gave the Trust a short-term licence to build on the closed part of Tari Road and to operate a tour guide service from the site.
Trustees of Maungatautari 4G Land appealed Council’s actions to both the Maori Land Court and the Environment Court. Both tribunals said they had no jurisdiction over the dispute.
Their complaint to the Ombudsman’s service bore more success. In 2018, the Ombudsman issued a provisional ruling that Waipa Council’s partial closure of Tari Road was unlawful.
The High Court was told Maungatautari Trust subsequently bulldozed a new access point from Tari Road through neighbouring land to the reserve.
Some five years later, representatives of Maungatautari 4G were in court, continuing to dispute Waipa Council’s earlier actions in partially closing Tari Road.
Justice Campbell ruled Council had authority under the Local Government Act to close off part of the road. And as owner of the road, Council had authority to grant a short-term licence for the Trust’s building sitting on the road.
Maungatautari 4G’s complaint that the partial road closure amounted to a public nuisance was dismissed. Council consent saw Tari Road closed off about twelve metres from its end by means of a fence, turnstile and gate. The gate was not locked.
To reach their land at the end of the road, Maungatautari 4G members were required to pass through two gates in quick succession; the disputed Council-approved gate and the landowners own boundary gate.
Justice Campbell said there was no evidence of Maungatautari 4G being inconvenienced. No owners lived on the land. While their land is of spiritual and cultural significance, there was no evidence of access complaints, he said.
The disputed gate, fencing and turnstile were removed in 2018.
Maungatautari 4G Section IV Landowners Trust v. Waipa District – High Court (26.04.24)
24.103