> and its been working great for them.

If money is all that you count. Switching from low-impact sheep farming (especially in the South Island) to dairy has basically ruined the environment. It's NZ's worst kept secret. I guess it will take something like Japan's "四大公害病" to make everyone wake up

The "low impact" sheep farming clearing millions of acres of forest.

But yeah it does seem like the Canterbury authorities especially have been terrible at actually enforcing environmental laws (based on stuff.co.nz -- the best reporting and editing in the world :) ).

As long as you don’t swim or like clean water. On the bright side, we adjusted the permissible E. coli limits, so more rivers are now ‘wadable’. You can’t make this stuff up.