As I see it, historically in this country the people of Anglo Saxon decent ( of which I am one ) have had greater opportunities to hunt on private land and have on average been treated better under the law than other members of society. That has been their reality. Now that this is changing - as far as access for hunting with more and more exclusion from private land we might feel that 'rights' are being lost across the board, because properties are being bought by non Kiwis and previous access closed off. My point was that this situation has been the reality for NZ Maori since the arrival of the Anglo Saxon settlers and now it is the turn of the Anglo Saxon Kiwi to also loose what they considered 'rights'. In France I am quite sure that prior to the Revolution there were no rights to roam for the common person and now there are so things change. By my comment that 'Really this is how the world has always been' I mean that people are naturally selfish and don't want to share what they have on their properties, they want to excludes others especially those who are not of their race, class, religion etc. The rich will and have, always experienced greater freedoms and protection of their property rights than the poor. As the population increases this situation will only get worse.
There is an answer to these problems of access / exclusion and that is for hunters to unite into a single group and form a powerful lobby group. We have seen an example of what that can achieve recently with the Government reaction to the Tahr cull protests. Here in the South Island there are dozens of examples of public land which has access to it controlled by a private owner. Much of the High Country has been Crown land leased to Stations with perpetual leases. Many of these properties have sold part of their lease back to the Crown for cash and also received freehold rights to the remainder of the property. Because no public access easements have been established I cannot access that public land of which I am a part owner without permission from the land owner. I hope this answers your question @outlander without sidetracking / buggering this thread further.
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