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.
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