ACT's rural policy bundle — branded "Standing Up for Rural New Zealand" — combines water-rights liberalisation, sweeping deregulation of freshwater and farm-planning rules, a new Rural Workforce Visa, and rural-community measures, positioning the party as the primary-sector's most consistent advocate heading into the 2026 election.

The Policy: ACT — Standing up for Rural New Zealand →

What it does

• Devolves control of water resources back to regional and local councils, letting communities set their own standards for nitrates, sediment run-off, and freshwater quality.
• Liberalises water-storage requirements so farmers can build off-stream storage ponds without resource consent, increasing resilience to droughts and dry seasons.
• Allows councils to opt into a system converting existing water-resource consents into time-based tradable water permits, creating a market-pricing mechanism for surplus water allocations.
• Seeks removal or "rebalancing" of Te Mana o te Wai from the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020, arguing the concept creates council confusion and risks co-governance in consenting processes.
• Proposes raising the freshwater farm-plan threshold from 20 ha to 50 ha for sheep-and-beef, arable, orchard, and viticulture operations, exempting roughly 8,000 lower-risk farms.
• Introduces a Rural Workforce Visa (announced 9 June 2026): a standalone three-year visa for dairy, sheep-and-beef, and general farm workers, tied to accredited rural employers but transferable between them; exempt from ACT's proposed $6/day infrastructure levy.
• Provides a residency pathway after 72 cumulative months (six years) with an accredited rural employer.
• Backs targeted livestock grazing on DOC conservation land (announced Fieldays, 12 June 2026) to suppress wilding conifers on 1.8 million ha and reduce wildfire fuel loads, via explicit Conservation Act amendment.
• Proposes an "Open Seat Rule" for rural school buses (announced May 2026): any child along an existing route may board if a seat is available, regardless of school attended.
• Announces a dedicated rural-crime crackdown (28 June 2026): 100,000 additional police patrol hours per year, a dedicated rural crime unit, Text 111 extension to low-coverage areas, and tougher penalties for livestock rustling and armed poaching.
• Keeps agriculture out of the Emissions Trading Scheme and proposes a split-gas target separating biogenic methane from long-lived fossil-fuel gases.

The result

ACT's rural package sits at the libertarian-property-rights end of New Zealand agricultural policy. Supporters — including Federated Farmers, Beef + Lamb NZ, and DairyNZ — welcome the deregulatory thrust, arguing that farm plan compliance costs can stretch into five figures and that the current RMA acts as a "handbrake on the economy." Agricultural export revenue is forecast to reach $64.3 billion (year to June 2026), up 6%, which ACT cites as evidence that farmers deliver when freed from ideological constraints. Critics, however, are pointed: Greenpeace argues removing Te Mana o te Wai will "condemn more rural communities to unsafe nitrate levels," citing Canterbury monitoring data showing public town supplies already crossing the 5 mg/L threshold linked to preterm birth risk. The Green Party calls the freshwater rollback "profit at all costs." Māori legal groups warn the reforms undermine Treaty rights and ancestral connection to waterways. The Rural Workforce Visa drew internal coalition friction when Immigration Minister Erica Stanford (National) labelled the original $6/day infrastructure surcharge an "attack on the rural sector," prompting ACT to exempt the visa from the levy days after announcing it. Meanwhile the RNZ and Newsroom have noted that ACT's farmer support nearly doubles its general-population polling (19% vs ~9%), making rural seats an explicit electoral target.

The impacts to watch

• Whether tradeable water permits, if adopted by councils, create efficient allocation or instead entrench large irrigators' market power at the expense of smaller or newer farmers and Māori water users.
• Nitrate contamination trends in Canterbury and other intensively farmed regions after freshwater farm-plan exemptions take effect.
• Uptake and wage outcomes for Rural Workforce Visa holders, and whether the sector-tying provisions limit worker bargaining power.
• DOC's capacity to issue and monitor targeted grazing licences across 1.8 million ha of conifer-affected land without creating overgrazing risks for native species.
• Whether the Open Seat Rule for rural school buses reduces costs for families or strains Ministry of Education logistics on marginal routes.
• Rural crime survey trends following any dedicated police unit deployment — Federated Farmers' 2026 survey already records 67% of farmers experiencing crime, up from 41% in 2016.