“It’s not fair , it’s too hard”, said Fred, owner of a 105 Hectare Beef farm.
“Why should farmers have to pay tax on income when workers have had to for years? This lot will be voted out if they do that fair tax thing”
He had a point, Farmers were fucked off that they would also have to pay tax just like workers and they stood around today throwing shade at the fenceposts, muttering and sighing heavily.
Not much work got done.
The dogs kept out of the way.
The tantrums were deep and dark, shit got broken and carping old fucks moaned like acid reflux about the loot they would now have to give up – just like workers.
“So unfair this fair tax crap” – reckoned Don a local sheep farmer.
“Never dreamed it would come to this day” – he said polishing his shotgun.
“Why pick on us? We should be exempt? We are special” – reckoned Todd from Timaru.
He had a point Farmers should be treated like big cry babies who get their way by crying and blubbering every time anyone tries to save a fresh water fish or be egalitarian.
One law for Farmers another for everyone else.
“They’re making it impossible to be unequal in this country”, reckoned Blue, a hard bitten man of the land who owned 5 tractors, one helicopter, five rental properties, three pairs of gumboots, a 95 hectare farm, 6 motorbikes and two BBQs.
It was the same all over the country, Farmers were pissed with injustice of fairness.
“Equality is the enemy of the farmer”, said Bert who was now retired.
“I’ll be taking my tractor to parliament” said Robby a young red neck with a special message for Taxinda.
“Hands off my tax free shit”.
He was serious.
This was a privileged class.
“It’s always been tax free, ever since we started polluting streams, so why start now?”, grumbled Nod, a dairy farmer who had successfully poisoned several streams tax free.
“Yeah, and we don’t take kindly to city folks coming here telling us what to do”, said Mack, an old hand who had no time to talk as he spat on the ground and got into his ute.
Winston will probably save them all from this – and it has already probably been calculated that these Tantrums should occur now.
I can see this being the pay off for NZ First in two months time.
This is part of their base.
This business of having to pay tax on income was always for others not farmers.
If a farmer wants to pollute a stream, that should be tax free is the unwritten rule.
They’re not kidding.
Political realities like NZ First being on 3% right now will play a hand in how the TWG recommendations are traded off.
In the meantime it was necessary to piss the Farmers off and get them hollering and shouting and creaking and moaning in order to pull off the rescue.
This is just like taking away toys and making kids sit up at the table and behave properly.
At first there is a load of wailing and crying.
No amount of I want my mummy shit helps to stop it.
Bargaining begins eventually after several attempts at wailing and snivelling fail to change anything.
Winston will step up in April and save the day for this lot.
NZ First will pick up some new votes, the CGT will still go through for the Property Investors and Farmers will settle down, glad they only have to deal with about 10% of this business.
Which will have been the plan all along in my humble opinion.
In the meantime there’s a great deal of sobbing and feeling sorry for themselves going on amongst the multi millionaire farmer set.
Gerard Otto is an activist and a writer.
I hope you enjoyed that Mr Otto. I don’t think it helps anything though. Perhaps you feel better now.
D J S
Re: Seeds of discontent. The self-knighted John-boy Key summed it up when he said these farmer polluters and their privileged industry are only 10% of exports, and so ackshully, they aren’t really important to the NZ economy. QED. The daggers coming from the eyes of the farming community this week, interviewed by the moral minority, was frightening. It’s like they wanted to take the non-farming communities out into the middle of a paddock and gouge their eyes out, like it was a national pastime.
Sorry, John-boy said the dairy industry is only 10% of NZ’s economy. Sorry John-boy.
As long as the livestock keeps farting, shitting and burping they’ll be jake.
Well depicted Gerard,
We all know that both ‘farmers and the road transport rural and NZ wide operators are significantly “subsidised” as to their cost to damage they significantly have caused by trucking all freight though NZ main roads and rural including all moving around of their farming stock, feed, all aggregate, fertilisers and ground based truck applicators of sprays.
Farmers should back regional rail as a way to lower transportation costs.
Farmers should then just use local truck carriers to ship to and from the rail head as we did before for years and years when we made the whole farming industry a success then and they will show how environmentally clean & green they are now.
This evidence of high subsidies provided to Farmers and road transport companies by the general private road users was confirmed in studies significantly in the IPENZ study in 2005 ‘Surface Transport Costs and Charges study 5’
The facts were reported to all in the report where private road users paid 66% of their cost of road surfacing wear while truck freight operators paid only 54% and regional property taxes paid 8% also as a subsidy, so we know how much everyone has to pay to keep the freight to and from farms to export ports and processing plants.
In the IPENZ study rail rail company was found then to pay 77% over their wear and maintenance of the rail line so we should be careful when we choose who should pay more tax now.
Private vehicles then can their costs of their wear of the roads by using the IPENZ estimated costs in their road use costing report.
The last IPENZ report 2005 shows that of both road & rail costing of contributions from each transport mode;
Rail pays 77% of their total cost of maintaining the rail.
Private road users pay 66% of their cost of maintaining the roads.
Truck transport pays 54% of their cost of maintaining the roads.
These figures may change as the demographics change over time.
Either both modes use equal cost structural mechanisms such as the” Pot” of funding or we find another type of similar equal funding vehicle for both modes.
The attached IPENZ review warns that careful consideration must be made when deciding closure of rail as often it is not later reversible.
http://www.productivity.govt.nz/sites/default/files/Sub%20025%20-%20IPENZ%20Submission_0.pdf
2.4 RAIL
IPENZ is supportive of the Government’s Turnaround Plan for KiwiRail to upgrade rail infrastructure and rolling stock to help increase New Zealand’s economic productivity and growth. IPENZ also recognizes that elements of the network are uneconomic and may need to be closed. The decisions to close particular lines need to be taken with care – these decisions are often irreversible, and closure can erode wider network profitability. Line closures also impact on other components of the supply chain such as ports. Page 6 of 8
3. EFFICIENCY OF INTERFACES BETWEEN COMPONENTS
Question 57. Should decisions on investments in ports and in the associated infrastructure links to ports be left to the judgements of the individual suppliers of the separate components? Or would some sort of overall strategic plan provide useful guidance and some assurance that complementary investments will happen?
The major regional councils undertake multimodal transportation modelling and planning and these play a major part in designing the transport networks in metropolitan areas. This modelling includes specific localised freight analyses. Modelling is a sophisticated planning tool that uses a range of criteria to design and future proof (through scenario testing) a desirable and integrated transport network. Through this process the network can be designed to seek to achieve a range of objectives including those enabling regional economic growth, the efficient use of public capital, affordability, improving accessibility, and minimising environmental impacts.
Therefore a regional transport plan that recognises the freight supply chain’s interdependent components, developed in an inclusive way, can provide a context for development by both public and private infrastructure providers, and are a valuable tool for assisting with commercial investment decision making.
Similarly the Ministry of Transport undertook the National Freight Demands Study in 2008. This provided valuable information on existing and future freight demands.
Thus information and analysis by public agencies can be very useful for the private sector.
An interesting suggestion in the 2004 Infrastructure Stocktake recommended to Cabinet the concept of “facilitated discussions” between by central government, local government and private sector and infrastructure users and providers. This could be effective in bringing together the common issues – freight infrastructure development is driven by similar growth demands.
4.1.1 Pricing.
Many argue that if the prices are right (including externalities and the cost of capital), this will drive economically efficient outcomes. Each of the transport modes have different environmental impacts – noise, water quality, air quality and pricing mechanisms could capture these differences. The Ministry of Transport undertook the Page 7 of 8
Surface Transport Costs and Charges study in 2007 but this did not extend to sea transport. In theory pricing would place all transport modes on a level playing field. The Productivity Commission should consider whether improving pricing signals is feasible across all modes in the medium term. It seems that there is increasing acceptance of toll roads, but any form of congestion pricing or road network pricing would appear to be some years away.
4.1.2 Neutrality of public funding
Roads and rail are often competing modes for the freight business and this raises the problematic issue of the different government support for road and rail to meet the demands of the growing “freight task”. Recognising the issues with implementing pricing mechanisms, the Commission must consider whether Government (and local government) funding mechanisms are neutral and do not favour one mode over the other.
Further, commercial disciplines, investment decision making and financial reporting mechanisms (including balance sheets) are not applicable to the roading network. As a result of this and the acknowledged difficult funding allocation issues, there are inevitably cross subsidies between light vehicles and freight transport
I would be interested to know how many sleepless nights you have had worrying if the price you get for what you are good at producing will pay the mortgage . How may people are employed by you to produce your unproductive rants on those that do
Trevor we need a change of direction, and not a small change but a fundamental one.
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