Groundswell NZ presents its food tax petition at Parliament
More than 100,000 people have signed a Groundswell NZ petition calling on the Government to stop its emissions tax on agriculture.
The group’s co-founders, Laurie Paterson and Bryce McKenzie delivered the petition by tractor to Parliament on Thursday morning, where it was received by Associate Minister of Agriculture Meka Whaitiri and Deputy Leader of the House Kieran McAnulty.
A total of 102,724 signatures were collected by the group after the Government released its draft agricultural emissions pricing proposal, He Waka Eke Noa, which would tax farmers for the emissions created on their farms.
As the climate meltdown continues around us, and as we pay $20million to start compensating for the destruction the climate crisis is doing to the poorest, I thought about National’s original ‘Groundswell’ movement and their response to emissions targets 19 years ago by driving a tractor up the steps of Parliament…
Nineteen years after the ‘fart tax’, New Zealand’s farmers are fighting emissions
Almost 20 years ago, hundreds of furious New Zealand farmers jumped into their tractors, farm bikes and trucks and ploughed up Wellington’s main street towards parliament to kick up a stink against the so-called “fart tax” – a levy on livestock methane gases, proposed by the then-Labour government to reduce emissions.
A cow named Energy was led up the building’s granite steps and left an unwelcome mess in her wake. In doing so, she provided the opposition movement with a powerful, if indelicate, visual metaphor: rural New Zealand was ready for a mudslinging match with the capital. Just months later, the government abandoned the tax.
…despite all the evidence proving global warming is here and impacting us, how much has changed since this madness 19 years ago?
Look how in NZ the Corporate Quisling Farmers run NZ politics so much so that the merest hint of them being forced to pay for their own pollution is met with howls of persecution!
Farmers are 1.16% of the population, represent 5.5% of GDP, make 48% of greenhouse gas emissions and create 70% of NZ’s contribution to global warming yet they are able to run roughshod over any legislative reigning in because the have such enormous political and economic power!
They have structured the entire industry for their benefit in the form of a Monopoly and National sold 49% of our Hydro Assets to set up a $400million irrigation slush fund for dairy intensification!
They could still drive a tractor up the steps of Parliament and get away with it because they still hold enormous sway over the political and economic infrastructure.
This isn’t a ‘food tax’ it is making NZ Farmers finally pay for their climate crisis inducing pollution!
We all love Farmers because they produce food to feed us, what we don’t love is them feeding 40million others and placing enormous strain on our environment to ensure their corporate wealth and powerful influence over NZ politics continues!
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Who was it that said we don’t need farmers because the food distribution centres are full of food?
Any cost, no matter how small will end up with the end consumer. And any increase in food costs will fill the government covers as their intake in GST is going up.
But its ok, if the people can’t afford food they can wait in line at the charity soup kitchens or hope for a decent sandwich at school.
One could say its a vicious cycle, almost as if it were on purpose.
Except that’s not really what sets NZ food prices where we also export that food stuff (which is almost everything animal based). If what you say is true, NZ price increases would not be correlated with international market increases (since it’s local production, and it’s the cost that sets price, according to your logic). However, this is observably false.
Therefore, yes, the producers will use it as an excuse to increase the price of food to increase margins, but it’s not the actual driver of price. Consumers in NZ are being fleeced for private profits, and the cost of pollution for that private profit is being passed on to everyone (both in the need for clean up using tax-payer money, and in the form of the cost excuse to increase prices.)
Problem is – it is not producers that ultimately set the price, it’s retailers
Most of the retail cost of meat/dairy in NZ is retailer’s margin (and GST). And we have a duopoly in retail
That’s simply incorrect.
That’s complete rubbish.
The cost of our food in Aotearoa is largely based on the price we get for selling overseas. Thats why cheese, butter, meat, fruit, honey and seafood, etc are so expensive because everyone wants our produce. So no one is to blame here. Costs to producers are trivial.
That’s correct with the exchange also playing a large part.
Most NZ exports are paid for in US dollars and currently the NZ dollar is weak against the US dollar.
@ Nikorima
That’s incorrect. What you write is incorrect.
Our farmers product is, in fact, cheaper for people offshore to buy and not only that, but their currency is more valuable so it’s cheaper still for them to buy our agrarian produce. For example, our fruits pimped by the Apple and Pear Marketing Board Mafia watties is cheaper to buy in Australia than here. Our Meat Board Mafia meats are cheaper to buy in the UK than here as are our Mafia Dairy Board milk powder and cheeses.
And that’s really at the epicentre of the problems our farmers face. We’re lied to, they’re lied to, we’re all lied to while those lying Remuera liars make themselves multi billionaires. Look it up.
If you want to give the bash to anyone polluting our land, sea and air, beat up the Mafia run producer boards and the mafia-like mercantile firms pimping chemical fertilisers to farmers who have their noses jammed against the foreign owned mafia-like Bankster grindstone.
But don’t take my word for it. Why would you? Everyone lies right? You do the work for a change. Study the last 140 years of our agrarian primary industry’s financial and political history. Go on! Do it! Before you come here and tell me that it’s our farmers who are to blame. Our farmers have no power. They don’t have the numbers to put the shits up you fancy city cunts. All you do is whine through your cosmetic enhanced nose while you eat down your gaping mouth-hole. You greedy city fuckers are like the fat whiny baby at the end of the table. You sit there shitting where you eat while you waste most of what you grab.
If I could flick a switch to do a thing, the switch I’d flick would be to turn agriculture off for a year. Nothing off the farm. Not One Thing. But don’t worry.. You can always eat Binky the narcissistic sociopaths Ladradoodlespoodle support dog with a ready-lawn salad.
Farmers? If you’re not striking you’re not doing it right.
‘Groundswell’. Beware of those fuckers and the same goes for ‘Ag Action’. Their stupid, lame, cliche’d titles sound far too much like “ Lets Do This” or “Team of Five Million”. Neoliberal Labour’s sell-out plasti-mantra’s.
If you’re not on strike then you’re not doing it right. You’ll be made look like laughing stocks while achieving nothing other than showing the enemy your weaknesses. ” Your strength is in your Union. Your danger is in discord.” Said someone.
Well said.
Neither the meat or dairy boards sell a single kg of meat or milk. Surely you know that?
Main difference is price to consumer of those products here and overseas is supermarket margins.
As long as the farmers are raking it in, who cares about what happens to the environment?
In Somalia, environmental laws are non-existent, hence why that country is a shithole.
Yes millsy we all know the story of the famous Somali dairy boom, the over intensification of cows per hectare of sand, the over use of utes and how all the nitrates evaporated the water and triggered years of conflict as the wealthy dairy farmers all converted to a militant form of Islam.
If only they had decent environmental laws they would be the Switzerland of Africa.
It’s a cautionary tale of utter bullshit.
The “pollution” we are talking about here is methane from cows.
Are you paying for the methane that is emitted from your bowel, or the CO2 that comes out of your and every other human mouth every day, and pours into the atmosphere like an open sewer?
Socialist Republic.
Can you actually say that the sector’s omissions of 48% are being generated evenly across all the producers of that 5.5% contribution to GDP? That 5.5% is agriculture, forestry, and fisheries is it not? It’s not just cows and sheep. Some more granular data on contribution to GDP versus omissions would be interesting. I think farmer is quite a general term.
Growing up in the 70s and 80s I could swim in any river in my region safely, and I understand that was the case around the motu. It is not the case now and intensive cattle farming is largely the reason. We need to rescue our waterways, our lands life blood. Groundswell farmers need to change their attitudes and farming practices. Get with the times or farm other stock. Beef is not an essential protein, neither is cows milk/powder, it’s just a lucrative one. I love a fat eye fillet, but not at the expense of our waterways (and not at export prices). I’m happy to eat other proteins instead, and there are a lot of options.
Come for a swim on my farm, the water is far cleaner than city pools. You can chat to all the cows as you do. You can also see how we are, according to the Govts own calculator which is known to over estimate the bad, sequestering 5 carbons for everyone released.
But hey, why let facts stand in the way of a good political based beat up.
You live in a city at the expense of the environment- city waterways are the most polluted in the country.
It does allow you to live a completely unnatural life in a concrete and steel jungle next to fellow out of touch wankers though.
So you can all point the finger at those awful backwards farmers, whose produce has to transported to your supermarkets so you can eat at your convenience.
And your rich spoiled brat progeny can continue flying to Fiji for holidays while also joining in the finger pointing.
“How dare you”. Lol.
Never mind most sheep and beef properties have considerable bush cover – we won’t count that unless it’s part of an ETS. We will ignore the study showing greater than 90 percent of them are carbon neutral, it doesn’t suit the PMC narrative.
City good, country bad – here’s your EV subsidy let’s not think about the record amounts of dirty imported extra coal to charge it or the huge environmental footprint to mine battery components.
Tax those dirty farmers and their utes eh.
How many city households or businesses are close to or carbon neutral? F&$k all?
Hypocrites.
It doesn’t pay for the woke moral priesthood to look too hard does it.
We should tax people for living in the city- your lack of trees per person is appalling. You should have to plant your front and back yard in pine trees or pay a penalty. Maybe ban apartments unless they are registered in an ETS.
Well said Kcc.
Agreed. Farmers need to carry the stock numbers they can support on their own land. Own grass. Own hay and silage. Own supplementary fodder crops. The govt can help that by banning the import of that vile palm kernel shit.
Absolutely.
In the 70’s and 80’s the population of NZ was about half what it is now so it stands to reason that pollution from all sources would also double since demand for said sources has doubled. Ever think that maybe there aren’t too many cows but too many fucking people?
Farmers? Stop producing. That’s the end of your polluting.
City people. Stop eating. Simple.
Most of what is produced here is consumed in some other country.
so bratty we just let the farmers piss and shit on the rest of us, I mean I know thats a ‘german thing’ but…..
bollocks Gag. Since 1990 sheep farmers have reduced emissions by 40% (/kg lamb). Transport has gone up 84%.
That’s correct and methane from cows gets recycled in the atmosphere in 10 years, a fact the science deniers seem unaware of
got nothing to do with prices…why can’t kiwis just admit we’re getting done up the jacksie without a reach around.
take your kids swimming in any NZ river or estury jason
They do Gag!!!!!! They swim all summer in our creek on the farm – we drink from the same creek. You are conflating the deleterious effects of intensive lowland dairying with the relatively benign and biodiverse environs of extensive hill country farming. Suggest you take your kids to visit a hill country sheep and beef farm – and have a drink from the streams there.
Jason – well said. Wish people stopped generalising about ‘farming’, understood even a little about the different sectors.
?
Put petrol up to $10/litre and then I’ll believe you’re taking this “meltdown” seriously. Hurt your own voters and I’ll believe. Until then this is just cheap politicking by the Left.
We have not develop Ed tech, gaming, horticulture and other industry enough to replace farming and tourism revenue. So we are stuck with them.
Only answer is for bureaucracy and industry to work together.
Exactly Marco. Not all this bullshit having a stomp and saying “I just won’t farm anymore”. Who said anything about stopping farming? It’s about changing how we do things. Also stop using the term “farming” to cover every primary industry. You can’t tell me aqua culture, horticulture, sheep etc are doing the same damage as dairy.
Yep good old Noo Zilinders are very good at shooting ourselves in the foot when it comes to our economy, Sure farming may contribute only 5% to GDP but protein production accounts for nearly 40% of overseas exports. I’ve always assumed that NZ/AO is a trading nation.
I guess we can always set up cake and handcrafts stalls at various locations around the globe and that will see us right for paying back our burgeoning national debt
Or we can wait until we’re right in the shit of our own making and take a page out of some of our pacific island neighbours book and let the Peoples Republic of China pay back our loans, all for a small favour of course, perhaps a 50 million cow dairy farm or 3 and other protein products. All to be shipped home along the great belt road to the homeland using the latest and greatest carbon technology
Nearly 20 years ago with the fart tax that got pushed aside, while the rest of us started paying for an emissions trading scheme farmers were let off the hook to give them time to develop technologies to reduce their emissions, well since then emissions have only increased rather than decrease so enough is enough its about time farmers started paying like the rest of us!
What arent we paying?
Please be specific.
“Developing’ China won’t pay into climate loss fund”. Well there you have it. It’s now up to our handful of farmers to save the entire planet. Let’s hammer them hard so they quit farming. That’ll make everyone happy.
SK it’s incredible how so many are so stupid.
“ They have structured the entire industry for their benefit in the form of a Monopoly”
Lots of commentators make the mistake of only thinking of dairy when they write about primary production – surprised to see Martyn in that number though
If you are going to write seriously about this topic, you have to get a handle on the difference between the different farming sectors.
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