As a Fonterra supplying dairy farmer
you have every right to be disappointed with the release of the Government’s
changes to the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act (DIRA).
Fonterra will still have to supply raw
milk at cost to new, presumably foreign owned processors who can then export
value-added product in direct competition with the co-op, all without having to
establish their own supply chain.
Fonterra will still have to accept new
milk under the open entry provision, albeit with a few tweaks around new
conversions and environmental concerns, which is worrying enough, but wait
until you delve deeper: the flawed reasoning behind keeping this provision is MPI’s
belief Fonterra can already control
supply through the milk price. How this belief persists when legislation exists
specifically to prevent milk price manipulation is beyond me, and this is where
my disappointment turns to anger.
How the Minister can be expected to
overhaul vitally important legislation when the people in MPI advising him seem
to have little understanding of the dairy industry and the rules constraining
it defies belief. On one hand there’s a recommendation the Minister appoint someone
to sit on the milk pricing panel, and on
the other there’s a recommendation that totally ignores the reason for this
panel’s existence.
So I’m disappointed and a little
angry, how should I react?
I could get on twitter and give Damien
O’Connor a serve, I know he does his own social media and interacts with the
public. In fact when Genevieve Toop, Greenpeace’s sustainable agriculture
campaigner, tweeted that the government’s stance on open entry was a disaster,
the Minister interacted quite forcefully: “Absolute bullshit”, he replied.
While cathartic, getting angry on
twitter is ultimately pointless. The Minister would probably ignore me, but
there’s always the chance I could make him think farmers are dicks and that’s
possibly not the best approach when he’s got something I want.
Let’s not forget that only a year ago
this government really did think farmers and Fonterra were dicks, Shane Jones
launched a sustained and blistering attack on Fonterra’s chairman at the time,
John Wilson, and when he wasn’t reined in by his party’s leader or the Prime
Minister he doubled down. Fonterra had spent the better part of a decade acting
like a farmer advocacy group rather than a politically neutral, multi-billion
dollar international company and the incoming Labour-led coalition government
didn’t like them and weren’t afraid to show it.
What interests me is how our industry
leaders have reacted to the DIRA annoncement, they are representing my views
and theirs is the lead I should follow. They are the ones who get to meet MPs
and will make submissions on my behalf.
Federated Farmers who can always be relied
on for a good bit of outrage were, surprisingly, not outraged at all. They
expressed disappointment with some parts of the release, highlighted the parts
that gave them hope and expressed enthusiasm at the prospect of making
submissions on the changes.
John
Monaghan, Fonterra’s Chairman, was the epitome of diplomacy. He voiced cautious
optimism and signalled a willingness to work with the government to make
changes that were not only good for Fonterra, but good for the country and good
for the environment. If John was disappointed he hid it well, his was the
response of a man who knows Fonterra have come a long way in the face of a
hostile government and Fonterra will ultimately gain more from having a
constructive rather than combative relationship with the Government. He
recognised the progress made for what it was and welcomed the opportunity to
take those changes further.
Then we
have Fonterra’s Shareholder’s Council. It has always been my understanding that
they are there to represent farmer’s views and concerns to the Fonterra board,
to review the board’s performance, to create a healthy tension and keep the
board accountable, but they seem to have been popping up in the media lately
expressing opinions on all manner of things.
In
contrast to Federated Farmers and Fonterra, the Shareholder’s Council wrote a
very angry press release containing phrases like “continue to kick the can down
the road”, “a step too far” and “in direct conflict”. It read like a
declaration of war, that they were there to fight, to argue, to be outraged.
It feels to
me as if for every two steps the industry takes forward there’s always someone
willing to take us a step back. Now is the time for diplomacy, to put forward
reasoned arguments for change. As an individual who will never come face to
face with a government official I can afford to throw some angry words at MPs,
the people advocating for my industry cannot.
