I still can't find any other articles to corroborate the initial story (not even on the ODT's site).
Interestingly, the minutes of the last Game Animal Council's meeting give the impression that at least some kind of more concrete relationship between GAC and DOC around game management is being formed:
https://nzgac.org.nz/sites/default/f...ruary_2018.pdf
With that said, I hadn't heard of the GAC (mainly due to my own ignorance), they seem to have an incredibly low budget and basically zero online presence (no newsletter, no facebook page etc). Fingers crossed with the enactment of the trophies levy, they'll have the resources to make good on their purpose.