Every major debate in this country is fucked up.
Take the tax issue.
The Right scream ‘we are so over taxed – we demand tax cuts’ when the reality is our top tax rate is the 39th highest in the world behind all the Scandinavian countries plus Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France and South Africa!
Australia’s top tax rate is 47cents!
Our GST rate doesn’t even get us into the top 50 and our corporate tax rate is 40th while Government spending against GDP ranks 56th!
The Right scream, ‘We are over regulated – cut red tape’ when the reality is there are only 37 inspectors of rental properties for 300 000 terrible rentals while there are only 82 labour inspectorates who are supposed to police hundreds of thousands of migrant worker exploitations, and we are voted easiest to do business by the World Bank!
Likewise the Agricultural Right are screaming over this tepid step by the Government to make them pay for their climate damaging emissions their products produce when the reality is that this is all part of a joke response to the climate crisis that will see us carbon neutral in 28 years!
28 YEARS!
The right wings mythology has taken over the narrative on so many issues in this country that it is impossible to even begin debating because their assumptions have no bearing in reality.
Screaming this tepid measure will cut the throat of NZ is such hyperbole it’s meaningless.
This is why we urgently need a Public Broadcaster that isn’t swayed by commercial interests to actually explore these issues so the public are made aware of what the facts are and not what the corporate spin Dr pimps claim it is.
This measure won’t do a damned thing to adapt us to the reality of climate change, it’s just another tiny step of mediocrity and even then it’s framed as evil by the Right.
We are a shallow settler nation with all the maturity of a can of day old coke-cola.
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Someone will put me right here if I’m wrong. Our tax rate may be less than the Australians but their ability to pay that tax seems easier to me. Their wages and general standard of living is higher. They don’t pay GST on many food items. I don’t believe it’s a fair tax comparison. Stephen Minto would know. I don’t have a problem with the farmers paying tax on their emissions but it’s not consistently applied and I’m starting to smell a rat. This emission tax is directed at methane not carbon, so it lets the crop farmers off the hook. Sure they’ll pay extra for nitrogen fertiliser but nothing for the carbon released when they plough. Why is that. I’d hate to think it was turning a blind eye because we don’t want to upset the consumers of arable farming. Those who want oat milk not real milk (I’m one of those). Or any of those other crops or grains we consume that are so healthy for us. Every time one of those crops goes in three tonnes of carbon per hectare is released. You never hear a thing about that. It’s always the dirty cruel livestock farmer that gets pinged. Why is that.
Being in that photo just cost the MP for Wairarapa the 2023 election.
You acknowledge that crops have a carbon footprint, which would make it especially stupid to grow crops to feed to animals so we can eat the animal product. You should know the % of crops used as animal feed, if not look it up & ask yourself why we have such an inefficient system?
Direct tillage has been happening most of my life so crop farmers have options to reduce their carbon.
Then we should bring agriculture into the ETS. Simple. Then have a nitrate trading system after that.
I don’t know what the angry dwarf and Danger Dammo are smiling about. Given their electorates’ nature following this decision they are borderline unemployed.
’28 YEARS!’
In 28 years time most will live in houseboats or on rafts and the dairy farms of the Waikato and Canterbury Plains will be used for aquaculture, ricefields and taro swamps.
By this time Australia will be largely uninhabitable, the United States will have fought another Civil War, a new Russian Revolution will have happened, South America will be a flourishing United States of Latino Socialism and the Poms will still be trying to organise Brexit.
And after that it’ll start getting really bad.
The IPCC advises us not to implement climate change policies that may impact future food production.
[As a farmer] : The Four Tweedles aye? You have to earn those red bands Adern so take them off!
I came up with the term ‘Tweedle Snake’. It’s where morons in cars travel nose to tail behind the Moron Prime in the first car traveling at 90 kph who refuses to ( Or is too dumb to.) pull over and let the cars following to overtake. I think it’s a metaphorical tiny-dick thing. They wedge up each other, nose to tailing it as they cling to the steering wheel as if transfixed by the moron in front, and so on. That snake of cars is what I call the Tweedle Snake because it’s comprised of Tweedle dumb, and the tweedle’s dumber.
I look at that photograph above. I see a Tweedle snake. HSBC Jimmy. Tony Blair Adern. Lean-back O’conner. Yep. That moron’s the Minister of our primary industry and I have no idea who Mr Man Whisker is. Judging by his trousers, boots, blue shirt and cheap, zip front jersey I’d say he’s an agri- natzo ball-boy. Look at them. All out-standing in the field. That looks like a dairy factory in the back ground. Do those solar panels power up the robo-cockie if his little battery starts to droop?
Turning sustainable, multiple-use agricultural land into the test-tube grass carpeting the inside-out factories which feed money to the four foreign owned banksters here and a handful of our corporate lot who get millions annually in salaries and bonuses was the farming venture that built Post Invasion AO/NZ into the polyester paradise those four morons now stand on, teeth, hair and all.
No. No, it wasn’t. Modern, intensive Dairy ‘farming’ is as natural and farmerish as plutonium laced with uranium and all mixed with petrol.
Actual farmers? You must stop this. This is enough of enough. Stop work. Don’t be a Tweedle all your life. Stop work. Stop following the dimwitted lean-back moron in front. Instruct the Governor General that you need a royal commission of inquiry spanning the last 140 years. I’m fucking serious. Please, for the sake of us all. No pressure.
Oh Christ! Here comes ‘groundswell’. Look out innocent city people, you’re about to get tractor’d.
To get a broader understanding of the ‘groundswell movement’ all people all you have to do is bend over until you can smell you’re own ball bag. Then, stay there until the smell of your bum, plus your ball bag override your commonsense. It shouldn’t tale long because it was your lack of common sense that enabled such calisthenics.
( I personally suspect that ‘groundswell’ and it’s idiot cousin ‘Agaction’ are a device of the national party to further separate farmers from reality and all and any possibility of success in coming to terms with certain certainties. Like climate change and having to adjust. Remember? Farmers had a history of farming sustainably for generations until the national party sold them out to big agri chem and the banksters. That’s right. Without parasitising agriculture to make agriculture dependant on chemicals, over stocking and being under paid and over worked there’d be no now nine kiwi-as multi billionaires.
RNZ
“This is our nuclear moment for farming.” What the fuck does that even mean?
“Groundswell New Zealand co-founder Bryce McKenzie was referring to the world-first scheme that will require farmers to pay for agricultural emissions in some form by 2025 which went out for consultation this week.” What the fuck does that mean also?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/country/476584/emissions-pricing-rural-nz-ready-to-protest
Some farmers, likely out of sheer desperation, are farming chemically and over enthusiastically.
The way to fix that is to down-produce. I.E. Reduce your output and what output there is must be produced using sustainable agricultural practises. You seen “Kiss The Ground” No? Then watch it. If yes, then watch it again. Charging farmers to keep doing the same thing while expecting a different result is fucking stupid at best. At worst, it’s insulting.
Farmers? C’mon. Strike. It’ll cost you nothing and you’ll piss less people off. In fact, you’ll make more friends than enemies because your current friends ARE your enemies. Don’t listen to Bryce McKenzie. He has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about.
No rams, no bulls, no piggies, no goats or deer. No seed, grain or cabbages. None of that. If you can do that, and you can do that, you’ll soon realise that you do indeed have ultimate power and you’ll hurt no one in expressing that power. Except the few who’re without conscience who exploit you.
BOOM and just like that AO/NZ has solved there commitment to reducing carbon ( be it methane) by making those fuddy duddy predominately hill country sheep and beef farmers, pay for our emmmissions, I feel better knowing that I can pick the kiddies up from school and take them 200 meters down the road to sports practice in the the polished land rover and will happily book my flight to Wellington to participate in the next climate change protest sipping on my warm can of coke!
If we include all New Zealand’s carbon absorbing greenery in our carbon sink we are probably carbon neutral now. The so called experts have not even bothered to find our natural carbon sink. Here’s the plan so far….Let’s start as a desert and sell our land to overseas owners who can plant pine trees and claim carbon credits for an overseas company…then reduce our country’s income by adding carbon tax on pasture based products. Our main source of income…Boast to the world about being a leader in farm emissions tax. I guess we are the only country in the world that have sheep and cattle farms , otherwise they would all be doing it..It’s such a good idea…And the end result…Absolutely no effect on climate change as New Zealand’s green house emissions are so small and make no difference what so ever. The best we can do is engineer our emissions correctly…Emissions in , emissions out , then work toward the loss or credit…Even then we are still too small a country to make any difference ….Also it’s not probably the best idea to get climate change information from a Swedish school girl….just saying….
I hope no Swedish school girls have hurt feelings from my comments above…I’m sure there is counselling available if needed …..
Farmers dont want to lift a finger to reduce their emissions, or lessen the environmental footprint of their farming.
All they care about is money and profit, and they will turn the whole country into a dead shitshole to make more money. End of.
Best we get rid of farms and food and all that nonsense then.
We might have to. Agriculture is killing our waterways. I would happily have this country go ‘broke’ if it meant cleaner waterways, and air.
Not like we get the benefits of dairy flow through to us anyway, wages held down, budget custs to schools and hospitals.
We really need to take on these rich pricks.
Dirtiest waterways are in the cities where food is transported many miles to people who choose to live in a concrete jungle.
Should we improve our worst waterways and those with the worst carbon footprints by taxing people that live in cities?
Sounds good to me.
Perhaps you should try drinking a cup of water from the Waikato river. Just sayin’…
@ Millsey. Thank God you’re an idiot. I hate being wrong about someone.
The only thing this will do is make us less competitive on the world market, which of course means other countries can fill the gap at our expense. Presumably, NZ will impose the exact same tariffs on all imports of produce from our trading partners if they don’t themselves have a similar plan in place? Yeah, didn’t think so, since that breaches our “Free Trade Agreements”. So we shoot ourselves in the foot for the benefit of those that refuse to. Slow clap. This sort of short-sighted knee-jerk policy is exactly why this government is done in 2023.
Oh and BTW, all these new costs inevitably just get passed onto the consumer anyway, so more inflation. #winning.
the way things are going any country that can grow any food will be quids in, not that it matters because the farmers whose pollution destroys NZ will sell where the money is….and that’s not nz…we get the shit china gets the milk powder…yayyyy free markets
So what countries are so close to competing against NZ farmers for being the most efficient and productive farmers in the world, to use the Head of the Federated Farmers own words?
Ridiculous Millsy.
Jesus all the bleating. Try and do anything about climate change and we get ultimatums like stop farming etc, we won’t be competitive (ironically this could actually increase our brand overseas).
I’ll be interested to see what happens when they end up proving that (ridiculously) high nitrate levels in water are linked to bowel cancer rates. We will be told to suck up the healthcare costs and mortality for a mountain of milk powder.
What do you mean by proving that high levels of nitrate are linked to bowel cancer rates? I thought that was well settled.
As I said, farmers are more interested in profit than preserving water quality or reducing emissions. They would poison every lake, river, creek and stream in this country if it meant a (very ) quick buck.
I believe our personal income tax rates are lower on average than what they were twenty years ago while GST is higher, property rates are higher, and there are no or little changes to other taxes excepting excise taxation.
Bashing farmers is not cricket
are Groundswell farmers??