Todd Talks with Todd Muller National MP

I’m currently travelling around the country listening to our frustrated farmers. The message is clear. These last two years have felt like an onslaught from a government that doesn’t get rural New Zealand.

It started with the proposed Capital Gains Tax and further Tax Working Group’s report, which apart from decimating one of the key drivers of rural investment was littered with additional rural taxes from water to nitrogen and fertiliser. While this didn’t eventuate, the Government’s direction of travel was clear.

Next up was climate change policy. We all understand the need for New Zealand to play a part to reduce global emissions. But rather than a proportional response the Government served up a draft Zero Carbon Bill that had methane reductions of up to 47 per cent by 2050. Never mind it’s impossible to get there without destocking; never mind every other country subsidises their food production system; never mind we are the most emission efficient food producers in the world; they decided our farms are for the chop, or at the very least serious constraint.

Proposed freshwater reforms

Then there’s agriculture coming into the Emissions Trading Scheme, which the Government is still considering despite a sound sector-wide approach on the table that would actually make a difference over time.

The big issue currently is the proposed freshwater reforms. They’re asking for an average nitrogen reduction of 27 per cent across the country, with some areas facing 80 per cent. There’s no economic analysis, no social analysis, just anti-farming ideology cloaked in freshwater rhetoric that tries to frame opposition as environmental vandalism. Add in to the mix Mycoplasma Bovis and proposed ute taxes and there’s a bloody good reason farmers have had a gutsful.

Next month there’s a march on Parliament and I’m not surprised. But there is a risk that through the anger and frustrations the messages get lost. I hope that through the chants, tractors and placards, a clear message descends.

Courtesy

Our farming community is not one that denies climate change, not one who sets out to degrade water, not one that doesn’t want forests to play their strong part of the NZ export story. Our battle is not with urban New Zealand, it is not with foresters planting for future market value, or even with CO2 emitters and foreign investors planting trees who are using the Government’s policy to make understandable commercial decisions. Our battle is with a Labour/Green/NZ First Government that has, from its first day in office, turned their sights on a sector Helen Clark famously passed the last rites on in early-2000. We are not a sunset industry, we are 23,000 families, who work day in day out for our family’s futures, which in turn underpins our communities and indeed this country. 

We expect the courtesy of a two-way conversation on how we continue to lead the world in sustainable food production, not a one-way lecture on our perceived inadequacies. In short, we are farming, we are New Zealand, listen to us.