A Sigh Of Relief -- September 2017

I imagine there was a collective sigh of relief from farmers up and down the country at about 11pm on Saturday night. I imagine this because that was my reaction, and I milk 1000 cows on the outskirts of Ashburton on an irrigated farm. The relief was tinged with shock at the loss of the Maori Party, who was the only other party in consideration for my vote, and disappointment that New Zealand First would once again hold the balance of power.

In an election campaign of misinformation, half-truths and outright lies it was often hard to separate fact from fiction. There were big audacious $11 billion fibs to sow doubt and confusion and there were lies of omission designed to pit different sectors against one another.

So why relief? Call farmers what you will, and I’ve been called many unflattering things during this election campaign, but we are first and foremost business people and we like certainty - something which was in woefully short supply.

The Green Party to their credit were honest with their policies; agriculture would be phased into the emissions trading scheme, commercial use of water would be taxed, a moratorium would be placed on dairy conversions and cow numbers would be reduced over a period of time. Pollution would also be taxed, a policy I’m in favour of, but they chose to target nitrate which is very difficult to measure. No other sector is asked to pay taxes based on broad guesswork and farmers sure as hell don’t want to be the first.

There are arguments to be made for and against each of the Green policies, but each of them require a very high level of trust from the parties that will be affected. When a Green MP posts videos on Facebook telling viewers that the dairy industry is the equivalent of 90 million people pumping their untreated sewage directly into waterways, one could feel that the trust required for my support hasn’t quite been earned.

Labour’s water tax policy was the one that got all the publicity and that was no accident. It was a calculated populist move with one aim: to halt their slide in the polls and to snatch as many votes back off the Greens as possible. Had the policy simply been “we think commercial users of water should pay a royalty” it would have been a very dry argument indeed.

Much has been made of National stoking the urban rural divide with wild stories of cow slaughter, but the Labour wedge was more insidious. Irrigation was constantly conflated with pollution despite all evidence to the contrary; Canterbury accounts for something like 65 percent of all the country’s irrigation, watering 11 percent  of its land area, yet only 4 percent of the rivers are deemed poor for swimming. In contrast Auckland irrigates about 1 percent of its land area but boasts a hefty 62 percent of rivers rated poor for swimming.

The focus was constantly on dairy farms of which about 2000 irrigate, little mention was made of the other 9000 farms that hold consent to water as they didn’t fit the polluting narrative. It worked too, I can’t recall a situation in New Zealand where people have been protesting the opposition.

Jacinda Ardern was quick to reassure urban voters they would not be charged the tax as they already paid for their water; a refrain I heard constantly on Twitter and eventually gave up arguing against. Nobody in New Zealand pays for fresh water; not the irrigator, not the water bottler and not the resident who takes a 15 minute shower, but when you receive a monthly “water bill” the lie that you do is very easy to believe.

David Parker was asked on election night if he regretted the framing of the water tax; he did not, the huge amount of publicity it drew kept water pollution at the front of voter’s minds he said.

It did its job; Ardern’s ascension coupled with support for policies like the water tax drew Green and NZF voters to Labour. We won’t know until the final results are in, but I suspect the publicity also galvanised National supporters to get out and vote. No matter which way you slice it, 46% of the vote and a potential fourth term is an impressive feat.

But still the concern lingers. Just under half of the country voted for change and just under half voted for stability, and with Winston holding the balance of power I fear neither will get what they want.

This article published by Newsroom, 25/09/2017

That Water Meeting -- September 2017

Last month I attended a water meeting in Ashburton hosted by David Parker, Labour’s spokesman for water and the environment. The meeting had been planned for months and would, I imagine, have attracted little interest were in not for Labour announcing their policy to tax irrigation just a few weeks earlier.

I know Labour call it a royalty on commercial water use, but as it only affects irrigators and some water bottlers I think irrigation tax is a fair summary. Many column centimetres have been written about this tax in the past month and it depresses me to see so many commentators still getting so many things wrong, but I’d like to focus on the meeting itself because it was truly a fascinating game of two halves.

Parker was on a circuit of the country to promote Labour’s plans to improve water quality and Ashburton was his latest stop. He started by taking us on a photo tour of dodgy farming practices throughout the country that were affecting water quality: beef feed lots in the Hawke’s Bay with sediment traps overflowing into waterways, cows being wintered in Southland with massive pugging next to rivers, high country break feeding of deer and ‘spray and pray’ cropping practices on hill country. There was, at the insistence of Federated Farmers, one slide showing a polluted urban waterway in Auckland.

With each new slide the confused muttering in the room became more audible; “that’s not Canterbury”, “that has nothing to do with irrigation”. It was becoming increasingly clear that Parker was there to talk about one thing and the audience another.

He showed an excellent grasp of the issues surrounding water quality but brushed urban pollution to one side. When the picture of Coe’s Ford popped onto the screen he again showed good knowledge, conceding that the river had always disappeared underground at certain points and that irrigation was but one factor in an extremely complex system, exacerbated by three dry summers in a row.

Parker surprised me by saying that he supported National’s decision to fire the ECan board and install a commissioner, the first time I’d ever heard anyone in opposition deviate from the “death of democracy” line.

Parker’s pitch was this: Regional Councils have all the power at their disposal to implement and enforce nutrient management plans and to manage land use change but, with the exception of ECan, they’re not doing it and he’s pissed off about it. Labour, he said, would issue a National Policy Statement outlining their expectations and this would force the councils to act. It shouldn’t be necessary to do this, and ECan have proved it can be done, but other councils had dropped the ball.

He was charming, he was persuasive, he was knowledgeable and he summed up by saying that we had nothing to fear from Labour as ECan was leading the way and nothing would change. Had a controversial new policy not just been released he may well have sewn up a few votes by that stage.

Parker then invited questions from the floor and, no surprise, the first one was about water pricing.

The mood changed immediately and the audience became “you people”, we were told the rural/urban divide was huge and it was mainly the fault of Federated Farmers for defending indefensible practices.

He conceded Labour had made a mess of the Foreshore and Seabed situation and this, combined with Brash’s Orewa speech and Tuhoe “running around with guns” had made it impossible to address water rights, but that time was finally here.

Parker expressed frustration at the wild speculation on pricing and felt pushed into a allocating a 1 -2c/cumec band, totally failing to accept that releasing the policy with a price would’ve avoided any speculation at all.

Farmer after farmer stood up to speak: some like myself spoke of cost to business and were told we were wrong, others like David Clark expressed concern at being labelled polluters and spoke eloquently about the effect on the community of losing that money. He was ignored.

Tiring of our questions Parker snapped “I’m not here to negotiate with you; if you push me the tax will be closer to 2c than 1c”

He soon called the meeting to a close saying that neither of us was going to convince the other, he clearly though our concerns should be saved for the consultation period.

By this point I was convinced of one thing; the tax has nothing to do with pollution. The money going to iwi and ECan would be used at their discretion as it’s not central government’s job to direct regional councils how to use their resources. First and foremost the tax was a tool to halt Labour’s slide in the polls by grabbing the urban, to snatch votes back off the Green Party. With 70% public support for the policy they’d be mad to back down no matter how ineffectual it will be in cleaning up waterways.

Parker had his supporters in the room too, and the comments of one rammed home to me how much work we have to do to connect with non-farmers. “You bastards” he said, shaking with rage and pointing his finger at the crowd, “have had it your own way for far too long. You deserve everything you’ve got coming to you.”

And Parker nodded in agreement.