The Overseas Investment Office is assessing whether former NBC host Matt Lauer has failed the "good character test" for foreign investors.

Wealthy foreign investors who snap up vast South Island pastoral leases are not interested in developing the land, critics say.



Instead, people such as disgraced US broadcaster Matt Lauer are likely to just want to use it as a bolthole, Forest and Bird conservation ambassador Gerry McSweeney and Central Otago resident Bill Gordon have said.



Lauer was fired from his job as an NBC host in November after allegations of sexual misconduct.



​For the last 25 years successive governments have been negotiating with leaseholders, offering them freehold title to land they can farm more intensively, in exchange for land being protected for conservation and recreation.

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But Lauer, who last year bought the lease for the 10,759ha Hunter Valley high country station, does not want to go through the tenure review process.

Matt Lauer's Hunter Valley lease guards access to the 100,500 hectare Hawea Conservation Park in Central Otago.

His lease extends from the northern shores of Lake Hawea into the Hunter Valley, and guards access to the 105,000ha Hawea Conservation Park.

At the time of the sale last year, the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) did not secure access for trampers or hunters to the Park, because Lauer opposed it.

The millionaire broadcaster was able to fall back on a common clause relating to pastoral leasehold land, that the owner is "entitled to exclusive possession and quiet enjoyment of the land".

Music producer Mutt Lange has allowed access to parts of his lease land to allow events such as the Motatapu multi-sport event, but has safeguarded other areas to preserve his privacy.

"These people aren't necessarily buying these properties in order to develop them into dairy support or triple the number of sheep or whatever, what they really want is to have a bolthole and total control over access," McSweeney, who is also a high country tourism operator and farm owner, said.

The Lauer case is not the only one. In 2004 country singer Shania Twain and her husband Mutt Lange bought the pastoral lease of the 24,731ha Motatapu Station, near Queenstown, for $21.5 million.

Following their divorce, he subsequently bought the pastoral leases of Mount Soho, Glencoe and Coronet Peak stations to give him a total of 53,000ha.

In a much heralded "gift to the nation", Lange placed Queen Elizabeth II covenants over the land, offering public access with 21 tracks and trails, but at the same time enabling him to retain control over access.

It also meant the land would not undergo tenure review.

The annual Motatapu multi-sport event goes through the property and is a once-a-year chance for 3000 competitors and the public to enjoy the easier access from Wanaka to Arrowtown. While this was a requirement of OIO permission to buy, if the land had undergone tenure review, there would have been more open and available public access.

By contrast, when neighbouring Alpha Burn Station recently underwent tenure review, a public access track was created going around the lake margin for several kilometres between Wanaka and Glendhu Bay.

Gordon, the Community Board chairman at the time of Lange's Motatapu purchase, proposes that when pastoral leases change hands, the new owners ought to be forced to undergo tenure review.

He admitted the cancelling of a perpetual lease would be challenged in the courts but believes there would be a better outcome if Hunter Valley had to go through tenure review.

Pastoral leases last 33 years, but carry a perpetual right of renewal. At one point they covered 10 per cent of New Zealand's landmass (about 2.2 million hectares), but following 25 years of tenure review the Crown has bought leasehold rights to more than 330,000ha and leaseholders have bought freehold rights to more than 370,000ha.

Leases were originally owned by about 330 pastoral runholders who had very narrow use rights, such as not being able to cultivate or irrigate. In return, they have paid very low rents.

Meanwhile the OIO is still investigating whether Lauer has failed the "good character" test, which is part of the requirement for a foreigner to buy land.