I’ve just left a dairy shed in Bunnythorpe, where Nicole McKee and I launched ACT’s rural campaign and our plan to Make Farming Fun Again, alongside local farmers and a fair few members of the media who I suspect were in a milking shed for the first time.I got into politics because confidence in rural New Zealand was at an all-time low.
For years, farmers had been smashed with one new rule after another. Freshwater regulations, Significant Natural Areas, winter grazing rules, emissions pricing proposals, the ute tax, rushed firearms laws, health and safety paperwork, and layers of resource management red tape all added cost and uncertainty to running a farm.
I had spent more than 20 years farming and had seen first-hand what happens when people in Wellington who don’t understand farming try to regulate every part of it. Things are much better now.
The ute tax is gone. He Waka Eke Noa is gone. Agriculture has been kept out of the ETS. Freshwater farm plans are being simplified. The methane target has been halved. We have stopped the expansion of Significant Natural Areas, cut back unworkable winter grazing rules, restored 90-day trials, and are replacing the Resource Management Act with new laws based on property rights.
But there is much more to do. That is why today we released ACT’s full plan to Make Farming Fun Again
I don’t know any farmers who got into it because they loved paperwork. ACT’s plan is about bringing practicality and common sense back to rural New Zealand. To be frank, without the economic activity rural New Zealand has carried over the past few years, we’d be Stuffed.
The plan also covers rural crime, school buses, healthcare, workforce shortages, access to agricultural technology, wilding pines, illegal dumping, homekill rules, and the other practical issues that make a real difference to people living and working outside the main centres.It also includes a new commitment to provide an additional $4.5 million a year for rural catchment groups, maintaining total funding at $13.5 million a year, with scope to go further where groups can show they are getting results.That is the sort of environmental policy I believe in.
Farmers and rural communities know their land, their waterways and their local conditions. They are already doing the work to improve them. Rather than another one-size-fits-all rule from Wellington, we should back the people getting practical results on the ground.
Labour and the Greens have supported putting new costs on farmers through new taxes and regulation. As I’ve said before: if I could pay a tax to control the weather, send me the bank account.
Instead, our plan backs practical environmentalism while letting farmers farm.
Replacing the RMA is a major step forward, but the next decisions still matter. National Policy Direction and detailed standards under the new system will have a big influence on what farmers can do with their land. Freshwater rules still need to be rewritten. Te Mana o te Wai needs to be removed. Climate policy needs to reflect the different warming effects of methane and carbon dioxide, and the fact that New Zealand farmers produce food with some of the lowest emissions intensity in the world.
I’m also acutely aware that rural New Zealand needs certainty. Farmers make long-term decisions about land, stock, machinery and staff. You cannot sensibly invest when the rules keep changing underneath you, when government keeps adding new costs, or when politicians start proposing insane interventions in rural businesses like Fonterra.
I want my daughters, if they choose farming, to have the freedom to farm well without the red tape I’ve faced for the past 20 years.
Farmers do not need another politician telling them how to farm. They need backing to do the work they’re already doing to protect and enhance the natural environment, respect for property rights, and otherwise the freedom to get on with it.That is what this plan is about.
Cheers, Andrew Hoggard Dairy Farmer |