Federated Farmers poll shows a cultural sectarianism the Left can’t negotiate with – climate change reform must be forced upon Farming interests
I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, the Farming Community are sectarian and no matter the Left does, we can’t negotiate with them!
Think I’m wrong?
Look at the facts…
How would farmers vote if an election were held today? The results might surprise you
- National:54%
- ACT:19%
- NZ First:8%
- Labour:3%
- Greens:2%
- Te Pati Māori:1%
- Other:1%
- Unsure:12%
…THEY CAN NOT BE NEGOTIATED WITH!
THEY CAN NOT BE NEGOTIATED WITH!
THEY CAN NOT BE NEGOTIATED WITH!
Farmers are sectarian.
Labour foolishly (enabled by James Shaw) tried to cut deals with Farmers and Farmers turned and shat in our face!
Dark money from the agricultural industry soaks into the astro-turf Taxpayer’s Union stable of clients and enables Groundswell to stop any environmental improvements.
The truth is the Left need to be brutal on one hand and supportive with the other.
Just consider the manner in which Corporate Dairy have seized control of NZ’s political right…
The Climate Change Commission recommends methane cuts of 35-47%. However, under pressure from lobby groups like Federated Farmers – whose ex-President Andrew Hoggard is now an ACT Party MP – the Government established a separate panel to review the methane target in line with this controversial tool. That panel landed on a much weaker methane target.
Documents released under the Official Information Act show that the methane panel was established because the Climate Commission’s independence meant the Government could not direct it to use “no additional warming”. Ministry for the Environment officials advised at the time that “no additional warming” was not in fact a matter of science, but a political decision.
Larsson says, “The Luxon Government chose to sideline its independent, science-based climate advisory body by setting up a separate review panel with the very narrow task of giving it the answers it wanted. No wonder international climate scientists are raising the alarm.”
Further OIA documents show that the Methane Review Panel only met with agribusiness stakeholders, including a Groundswell-linked lobby group.
Greenpeace says this is just the tip of the iceberg. The organisation has unveiled documents showing the startling level of influence that groups like Federated Farmers, Dairy NZ and Beef+Lamb NZ have had over government policy. This includes writing draft policy and communications plans for Ministers.
…consider the criticisms of Professor MacCulloch…
Perhaps the most under-explored aspect of MacCulloch’s critique is his consistent condemnation of corporate New Zealand’s underperformance. He argues that the real drag on New Zealand’s productivity isn’t just government bureaucracy, but the incompetence of private sector leadership.
Business is too focused on getting either special legislative deals from the government of the day, or else corporate subsidies from the taxpayer. According to MacCulloch, the last Government’s Covid Wage Subsidy Scheme was a giant transfer of $18bn to some of the wealthiest businesses in the country, most of whom didn’t need it.
Pointing to the stagnation of the NZX50 and the dismal share performance of dominant companies like Fletcher Building and Air New Zealand, he suggests that cushy directorships and an old boys’ club mentality have entrenched mediocrity.
…this total policy capture by polluter interests is the reason we are being attacked on the global stage by International Climate Scientists…
Scientists accuse New Zealand and Ireland of trying to cover up livestock emissions
Leading climate scientists have accused politicians in New Zealand and Ireland of using an “accounting trick” to back their sheep and cattle industries, warning their support for methane-emitting livestock could undermine global efforts to fight climate change. In an open letter shared with the Financial Times, 26 climate scientists from around the world warned that New Zealand’s proposed new methane targets risk setting a dangerous precedent.
…that’s right!
The Corporate Dairy industry has spent millions donating to National and putting dark money into Right Wing astroturf organisations to shut down any meaningful climate emissions targets that the rest of the world has noticed the policy corruption and are now calling us out.
We are being attacked internationally for being a climate criminal all because National refuse to stand up to their Corporate Dairy interests.
The Carbon Capture ‘technology’ that National have banked all our emission offsets on doesn’t work…
Carbon capture: Pivotal project for cutting greenhouse gas emissions looks shaky
A critical part of the government’s plan for cutting greenhouse gas emissions over the next five years appears to have fallen over.
…and in the last budget National cut 50% to climate finance, barely any cuts to emissions, all while slashing foreign aid for our Pacific brothers and sisters by cutting climate aid by $100m.
This Government is a Climate Denial Government who are refusing to do anything about the coming adaptation because they are paid by the polluters.
So how does the Left respond?
The truth is the Left need to be brutal on one hand and supportive with the other.
NZ Dairy farms were forced to take on huge debt for Dairy intensification that our environment couldn’t sustain WHILE enslaving us to our new Chinese Economic Overlords.
We are pissed off at Corporate Farmers over how John Key sold 49% of our Hydro Assets to create a $400million irrigation slush fund that was used to intensify dairy farming while polluting our water and generating climate changing gasses!
Enjoying those new power price bills? That’s because of what Key did for the Farmers!
We pay a price for NZ dairy and NZ meat that is set by an international market, so we are competing with the 400million others wanting that product!
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.
A recent report on food security found NZ had incredibly low food security because it was so open market driven and refused to subsidise farmers.
Which is where we on the Left must drive the debate.
We should absolutely consider subsidising food grown by NZ farmers and horticulturalists and our seafood and meat and dairy that generates a 15% price reduction for all NZ produce consumed here.
For growers we need to protect our most productive growing land for food by giving those producers tax breaks to ensure they can continue to feed NZers first.
Rebuilding a direct link between the harvest grown here, the people who grow it and a grateful local market who enjoy the product WITH a 15% price reduction.
Climate change will kill global free market supply chains, we are locked into hyper-regionalism. We need to build new economic structures, subsidising NZ kai for the domestic market would lock in certainty for producers while strengthening food security for the population.
So we should work with Farmers to ensure stable food production and prices for our own people AND we must brutally take the Framing Industry ti court for their environmental crimes, which is exactly what happened this week…
Climate Legal Action Necessary Response To Govt Inaction – NZCTU
The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi welcomes the legal action taken against the Minister of Climate Change by a coalition of legal experts as an important step in ensuring that Aotearoa meets its climate action obligations.
“We strongly support legal action to ensure that the Government is held to account for its legal obligations under the Climate Change Response Act,” said NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff.
“The union movement is deeply concerned by the Emissions Reduction Plan 2026-2030, which contains no significant policies to reduce emissions and will fail to get New Zealand meaningfully closer to our 2050 net-zero commitment.
“The actions – or lack of them – by this Government on climate change are the actions of climate deniers, not responsible leaders.
“Workers and communities need real political leadership that combats global emissions and invests in creating a just transition for industries and workers. We need leadership that develops and upholds long term consensus, not more U-turns.
“Instead, we have a government that cancelled 35 climate policies without consulting the public first, as required by law. Robust public engagement is essential.
“Climate policy is yet another area where this Government is prioritising corporate interests over democratic accountability and the interests of working people.
“Evidence is clear that a near-total focus on tree planting through vast pine forests is not a sufficient response – we must reduce emissions at source.
“Alongside the weak emissions budget, in Budget 2025 we saw a total abdication of responsibility on climate change and ensuring a Just Transition for working people in an increasingly volatile world.
“The NZCTU supports bold climate action to reduce emissions, adapt to the changing climate, and transition to a zero emissions economy that provides full employment for workers,” said Wagstaff.
…we need to work with Framers to ensure our local food security but we must forget negotiating with them and use the law to force them to change their polluter ways.
LOOK AT THOSE NUMBER AGAIN
- National:54%
- ACT:19%
- NZ First:8%
- Labour:3%
- Greens:2%
- Te Pati Māori:1%
- Other:1%
- Unsure:12%
You can’t negotiate with a sectarian culture like that,
Send in the lawyers, use the law to forces the polluters to change, no more negotiations!
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“We should absolutely consider subsidising food grown by NZ farmers and horticulturalists and our seafood and meat and dairy that generates a 15% price reduction for all NZ produce consumed here.”
The last time NZ subsidised sheep production the IRD reported national flock grew to 63million but if you actually went to the hills and counted you would have found a lot of invisible sheep.
If you cut grass fed sheep and beef production what will people eat? Huhu bugs or chickens fed on fossil fuel produced grain.
If you want to lower food costs Labour needs to state they will remove gst from all food of any kind sold in supermarkets or dairies. Thats a ‘saleable’ universal tax cut for everyone.
Do you know the feed conversion ratio (food input to meat output) for chickens compared to red meat? While NZ is mostly grass based for sheep and cattle there would need to be substantially more pasture along with the methane produced than would be saved by taking away what you call chicken fed on fossil fuel grain.
The obvious answer is to eat whole plant foods but that would require people being able to make decisions not based on their feelings and taste buds.
Bit trite Bonnie. We are omnivores and have thinking minds so unlike lions we might think it is wrong to eat … dogs, cats, rats, pigs, cloven-hooved animals, people etc. But we have a digestion made or suited to particular plants and animals – if you have always eaten rice and are starving wheat might finish your off.
There is a threat of a nasty bird flu virus that may require us to innoculate all our hens so we can keep on having their meat and eggs. And there was a deadly potato famine in Ireland, but not just once, there had been a series of them but the Brit govt didn’t want to think about that as a problem. And you can put forward your plant based ideas, not thinking about the problems too. It would certainly help to eat more plants but you have to eat a lot don’t you, to provide all requirements?
As inside Inna previous post it shows farmers are smart voters.
They are not the most intelligent bunch to be fair.
No, it shows you don’t have to be smart to be a farmer. But you do have to be greedy and selfish.
Industrial scale farming is based on animal exploitation and cruelty whichever way you look at it–along with well documented environmental degradation. Not a lot to like with the sheep shaggers and bobby calf beaters. Farmer apologists claim they “feed the nation”, which if you count the baked beans dispensed at remaining food banks and Patika Kai stands is partly true. Poor folks are not having export lamb for dinner.
Now, horticulture is another matter, although the big operators need a good tidy up too, smaller ones often go organic with high quality produce. Plant based food is the future, especially if distributed locally, less land and fert and pollution.
Farmers are overwhelmingly tory reactionaries and would soon put up armed barricades to stop the townies accessing their stuff in a societal collapse of some kind. Deal to the sector as soon as we get the chance, and in the meantime reduce your consumption of meat and dairy.
Nothing new there been that way for 100 years .Farmers dont think they just tick the blue box regardless of who the candidate is .Even if we changed the red and blue around they would still vote blue .
Farmers need to change. But force never works.
Give them a reason to change- not just penalties.
How about 5 years straight of drought interspersed with massive flash floods….because that is what climate change is going to bring their climate denying selves…
Of course their shortsighted greed over anything else now means it’s
now too late …Can’t say that they weren’t warned…
Clogs to clogs in 5 generations and nobody else to blame!
We’re all going to be forced to adapt. Why can’t farmers too? Why do they consider themselves so special and needing to be carried?
When your working life is fairly isolated and you aren’t exposed to the everyday difficulties others face with transport, childcare, over-crowded living conditions, poor pay etc. you’d tend to think your own problems were the worst. No-one suffers like you. Especially not those underserving people needing to access foodbanks.
The reasons for farmers to change should be self-evident, if they were really so well-read and educated. They shouldn’t need to be jollied along when people with fewer advantages just have to get on with it.
So, force does work. They will either take up the challenge or they will go under and join the ranks of the hapless, helpless and hopeless themselves.
Farmers vote for themselves not for what is better for our country. They claim to be the backbone of our country yet too many NZers can’t afford to buy their produce, and they have and still do get away with polluting our waterway. They also act like they are the only ones who work hard in our country. In the early 80s we got subsidised mutton and milk it was good I use to buy half a side of mutton for 13$ this lasted a fortnight, and I was able to make many meals. Our PM is currently bending over backwards for the farmers watching him greaseball is sickening he appears desperate to be liked, not exactly a quality we want of our PM and a leader.
Farmers vote for themselves not for what is better for our country. They claim to be the backbone of our country yet too many NZers can’t afford to buy their produce, and they have and still do get away with polluting our waterway. They also act like they are the only ones who work hard in our country. In the early 80s we got subsidised mutton and milk it was good I use to buy half a side of mutton for 13$ this lasted a fortnight, and I was able to make many meals. Our PM is currently bending over backwards for the farmers watching him greaseball is sickening he appears desperate to be liked, not exactly a quality we want of our PM and a leader.
Sorry but 15% off $24 per kilo rump steak from a 5 year old lame dairy cow which is not fit for human consumption is not going to make an iota of difference to the well being of kiwis.
There’s a number of issues here. One, the international market price for that choking hazard is no where near $24 per kilo. It is suitable only for hamburger in the US. Two, it doesn’t matter how efficient NZ farmers of dairy, beef and sheep are, on a food production basis they are incredibly inefficient and polluting compared with alternative crops, and a luxury the world can no longer afford at current levels of production.
So, the dairy (especially) and beef and sheep (partially) need to go.
Which is exactly why the Regulatory Standards Bill is in the process of becoming law, because when those dairy farmers are forced to cease production, they want to be reimbursed for stopping the degradation of our aquifers and waterways and the lost water rights they stole from the nation.
Yes, your right rangi and it won’t be just the farmers wanting reimbursement there will be drillers, miners, forestry, water bottling companies, housing developers and others of course.
All these workers earn good money and pay lots of tax .Without them who is going to pay for health education and infrastructure. There is no money tree and while Greenies might be happy in a cave and eating lentils most do not.
And destroy the environment… whilst getting subsidies from the government whilst everyone else basically can’t get fucked, eh Trev.
Lentils are much healthier than red meat you boofhead, just ask the cancer society.