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
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