The remit that misses the point
At its annual convention, NZ First passed a remit to speed up the development of water storage schemes for irrigation, with agriculture spokesperson Mark Patterson complaining that too many irrigation projects are stuck in a loop of red tape. It is a striking move for a party sitting inside the governing coalition, effectively outflanking its own government on a bottleneck it shares responsibility for.
But the convention remit is the least interesting thing about this story. New Zealand already has a Fast-track Approvals Act. Government money is already flowing to the country’s flagship water storage project. And it is still nowhere near delivering. That is the problem business owners in horticulture, viticulture and dairy actually need to reckon with.
The Tukituki timeline tells you everything
The Tukituki Water Security Project in Hawke’s Bay, formerly the Ruataniwha Dam, is the clearest case study going. It would be an 83-metre-high dam creating a 93 million cubic metre reservoir, the largest dam built in New Zealand since Clyde more than 30 years ago. It has already secured an $18 million government funding loan and is actively pursuing fast-track consenting.
And yet the final investment decision is not expected until 2028, with water available from 2037 if approved. That is an 11-year runway from today for a project with government backing and access to the fastest consenting pathway the country has. Project chair Mike Petersen says the region could be 25 million cubic metres short of water by 2040. The water, if everything goes to plan, arrives three years after the shortfall bites.
The cost of that lag is not abstract. NZIER modelling cited by Federated Farmers Hawke’s Bay president Anthea Yule puts the project’s value at $693 million in additional annual regional GDP once fully operational. One viticulture operator told RNZ their $19 million development faces existential risk because its water consent expires in 2035 with no certainty of renewal.
Consents that never really settle
The deeper issue is that the current framework offers no finality. In May 2026, Forest & Bird filed judicial review proceedings challenging the Tukituki consent extensions, arguing that classifications have shifted since the consents were granted in 2015, with the Makaroro Gorge now identified as an outstanding natural feature. Environmental designations can change after a consent is issued, reopening legal risk years or decades on.
The Resource Management (Duration of Consents) Amendment Act 2025, enacted in December 2025, tightened expiry rules for water-related consents, piling immediate pressure on projects consented around 2015. The Manuherekia River scheme near St Bathans shows how long resolution can take. It has been in the pipeline for more than 10 years, and government, iwi, water users and environmental groups still cannot agree on minimum flow requirements.
A storage problem, not a scarcity one
The industry is blunt about the diagnosis. In February 2026, Federated Farmers vice president Colin Hurst argued that New Zealand does not have a water shortage but a storage problem, and that schemes have historically foundered not on construction cost but on the expense and delay of planning processes. IrrigationNZ acting chief executive Stephen McNally has called for a dedicated Minister for Water and a National Water Strategy, noting that water can also support environmental flows, drought preparedness, hydro energy and firefighting, making it multipurpose national infrastructure rather than a farming subsidy.
The demand is real. Irrigated land almost doubled from 383,000 hectares in 2002 to 762,000 hectares by 2022, and primary food systems now account for 74 percent of allocated freshwater use. Meanwhile Te Waihanga warned in 2023 that total demand on the consenting system is projected to rise more than 40 percent by 2050, with processes already becoming slower and more costly.
The test that matters
For investors weighing a long-lived asset in Hawke’s Bay, Marlborough, Canterbury or Southland, the practical question is whether you can build a business plan around water access past 2035. Right now the honest answer is no, and that is a capital confidence problem costing regions hundreds of millions in deferred investment. The government’s real test is not passing another law. It is whether the fast-track and consent reforms it already has can deliver water infrastructure at the pace the productive economy needs. Tukituki is the live experiment, and the answer will be clear by 2028.
Sources
- NZ First vows to leapfrog Govt to build bigger irrigation dams, faster (2026-07-20)
- Opponents unhappy with controversial $18 million Hawke’s Bay dam project (2026-06-18)
- Forest & Bird challenges councils over controversial dam project in court (2026-05-21)
- Dammed if you do, damned if you don’t (2026-05-28)
- Our Freshwater 2026 (2026-04-09)
- Water Storage Reform: why water scarcity isn’t the problem (2026-02-12)
- IrrigationNZ Calls For A National Water Strategy (2026-06)
- Capturing water locks in Hawke’s Bay’s future prosperity (2026-06-22)