Reality shatters Ardern’s dream
Reality appears to be about to shatter Jacinda Ardern’s dream that New Zealand could lead the world in showing how to deal with farm emissions. The Government is facing a breakdown in negotiations over its much-vaunted He Waka Eke Noa deal with farmers to price greenhouse gas emissions and now looks likely to have to admit defeat. The consequence is likely to be that the Government will now have to impose a new fertiliser levy on all farmers without their agreement. In effect, it would be a tax. The levy was first proposed by the Greens in their 2020 Manifesto and would be a big political win for them. But it would impact unevenly among farmers — hitting dairy farmers much harder than their sheep and beef colleagues. And its imposition would end Jacinda Ardern’s promise to the United Nations that the Government-farmer agreement would show the world what was possible on climate change mitigation. Ardern was one of Waka Eke Noa’s biggest boosters.
There are not good faith actors on the corporate farming side, they were always going to collapse this deal because they have no interest in changing anything and because Labour and the Greens are so weak and incremental, the corporate farming interests can play them like fools.
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!
As Xi crowns himself God for life, are we going to talk about how the quisling Corporate Farmers of the National party have addicted us to Beijing’s gold?
The Corporate Farmer Quislings tell us the $20billion in trade they get from John Key’s ‘all our cows in one Beijing paddock’ strategy is beneficial for me.
Really?
I don’t see any of that fucking money!
I pay a price for NZ dairy and NZ meat that is set by an international market, so I’m competing with the 60million others wanting that product.
So I don’t see no price benefit from those quisling corporate farmers getting richer.
A cow shits the same as 14 humans, we have 10 million cows, that’s the equivalent of 140million humans pissing and shitting into our rivers.
I don’t see no environmental benefit from these quisling corporate farmers getting richer.
Xi is committing cultural genocide and presides over a terrifying mass surveillance state that represses its people while building them chase cities.
I don’t seen no human rights benefit from these quisling corporate farmers getting richer.
We are now utterly addicted to Chinese money and can’t disentangle ourselves from their influence and power, especially with 200 000 Chinese NZers now living in Auckland, a city of 1.2million.
I don’t see no sovereignty benefit from these quisling corporate farmers getting richer.
The quisling corporate farmers claim they are generating jobs, yet they import cheap foreign labour to do those jobs!
Look at the joke fuss kicked up by Farmers at the mere suggestion they pay for their pollution and the fear with which Labour and the Greens have backed down.
This money generated by trade with China comes with so many fish hooks there’s more hook than fish.
We have been betrayed by the quisling corporate farmers and their National Party patsies. THEY are getting rich, we aren’t.
The Greens and Labour have to agree to ram the changes through in the first year of their Government so they actually get change rather than delay tactics from corporate farmers.
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Farmers went dark on he waka e whatever since the government imposed changes right at the end different to what was agreed to -so collapsing it now as does indeed seem likely, isn’t bad faith by farmers, it’s a response to bad faith by government.
And it’s not just corporate farmers that hate this stupid imposition, it’s most of them.
This government is happy to send 20% of the worlds least carbon emitting sheep and beef farmers (92% carbon neutral) to the wall planting their farms in fucking pine trees so the food gets grown overseas with higher emissions.
Scrap the scheme, scrap the government.
Agreed. The way the entire issue was handled has sadly resulted in an even greater rural/urban divide.
Crooks ?
Well, farmers are working people, and the smaller farms they can still own are a huge proportion of the total.
If everyone got together in a co-operative, it would ensure that they weren’t driven off the land by large agricultural companies.
Labour used to be the champion of the farmer, giving him guaranteed gate prices and subsidies. Now Labour attacks the farmer, and burdens him with new costs.
A bias comment most NZers are working people and most NZers aren’t constantly putting their hands out or destroying the environment especially the waterways.
The sheep shaggers have long had too much influence in this country. In many cases sitting on stolen and dubiously acquired land. Creaming it for ever. Raiding aquifers, polluting waterways, exploiting and mistreating animals (do you know how cows can produce milk year in year out?–it is not a pleasant process).
The sooner farm land is moved over to plant based production and lab meat is on stream the better.
Farmers already pay alot of tax. Trucks and buses are the biggest polluters.
Our farmers paid the bills and kept the entire country afloat during Covid. Without achieving the income for NZ during this period, we would ALL be severely fucked now. NZ Farming KEPT THE LIGHTS ON with little acknowledgement.
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