The madness of National stealing water for Dairy Farmers, economic meltdown and the looming environmental catastrophe
Watching Steven Joyce doing the weekend current affairs circuit describing Labour’s water tax on farmers as economic self mutilation and denying criticisms that National have stolen and subsidised water for their Dairy Farmer mates is evidence of a Government too self interested to think outside their special interests.
National stole democratic water rights from E Canterbury to favour farmers, they sold half our state energy generators to pump $400 million into an irrigation plan so farmers could turn every square inch into bloody dairy farms and the terminal short sightedness in this economic setting will actually doom the Agricultural industry, open the wider NZ economy up to damage and ultimately help contribute to catastrophic climate change.
National have bent over backwards for the farming community at a cost to everyone else and by placing all our cows in one Beijing paddock they’ve left us wide open to serious future shocks.
The first is the deep damage this causes our environment with polluted rivers too dirty to drink or swim in. For those still claiming our emissions are too small globally to be significant as an excuse to do sweet bugger all, the grim truth is that the worse case scenarios when it comes to climate change are increasingly becoming the only scenarios…
Apocalypse soon? A disturbing doomsday article has divided scientists
David Wallace-Wells’ startling – and unashamedly doom ridden – essay in New York magazine, entitled ‘ The Uninhabitable Earth ‘, has ruffled feathers, reports news.com.
“I promise, it is worse than you think,” he says in the opening line of the article published last week.
Even if Australians manage to survive major cities being in “permanent extreme drought” or poisonous sea “burps” it’s likely we’ll be finished off by “rolling death smogs” or “perpetual war” instead, the article states.
…if environmental doom doesn’t shock you into action against dairy intensification and a demand to protect our fresh water, then what about the inconvenient truth that the current drive to sell raw milk product to China is ultimately a flawed one?
Many dairy farms are in deep debt from cost of conversion and intensification – if China starts mass producing milk powder, it will herald our economic collapse quicker than plummeting housing values.
When China can match our production of milk powder, why would anyone buy it from us? Finished product will have price value, not raw product, yet here we are building an intensified dairy model on selling mountains of milk powder to China when they are close to being able to produce that raw product themselves.
We have gone for the cheapest and dumbest export model and put the dairy industry in debt doing it…
Rural debt appears to have topped $60 billion
Agricultural debt has likely risen above $60 billion over the last few years as dairy farmers monitor their income before topping up farm overdrafts.
Westpac’s manager of corporate agribusiness at Palmerston North Dave Hutchisonsaid he thought the downturn in dairy returns over the past few seasons had contributed to a lift in agricultural debt.
“A lot of dairy farmers are still in the wait-and-see position,” said Hutchison. “They are waiting for cash to come through and are taking a cautious approach.”
…a sudden and vicious down turn in dairy prices caused by China expanding their own production capacity will be what spooks banks to ramp up their interest rates because of the debt that industry is propped up by, this will have an immediate impact on the housing market and the obscene level of private debt many Kiwis are forced to endure to get onto the property market.
In every possible way to measure it, environmentally, for the health of the industry and the wider economy, National’s crony capitalism focus on helping their farmer mates has endangered our water, their jobs and our entire economy.
All National have done for 9 years is feather farmers nests while shitting in all our back yards. This isn’t economic leadership, it is short sighted and dangerous.
Turning Canterbury Rivers into effluent and nitrate run off drains is unacceptable behaviour by ECAN and Central Government ?
The problem we have is MSM Journalists are either too stupid/scared or not intelligent enough to write articles about what is really happening here in New Zealand ?
I am still reeling in the knowledge that our rivers are now far more polluted than most of EU rivers which now are in better shape!!!!
This Government must be held to account of causing possible future health threats to the whole country now.
This is so serious when we were just ten years ago voted as one of the most “Desirable places to live”.
How much do we need to charge these criminals within the ranks of this toxic National Government???
Joyce was the usual ‘professional’ and lying idiot, but David Parker should have done better on Q+A:
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/theyd-have-thirstiest-cabbages-planet-david-parker-hits-back-horticulture-nz-over-water-tax
The whole interview:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1708/S00255/qa-david-parker-interviewed-by-corin-dann.htm
Labour are still full of amateurs, but while David Parker is NOT an amateur, he could and should have done better.
Why simply go an and defend another tax, which it more or less is, and not simply explain clearly the greater aim for the common good, using taxation for changing behaviour and better economic and social outcomes?
Why not explain, that by imposing an extra charge on irrigation water, this will lead to those in agriculture and perhaps other industries being incentivised to use water more efficiently, like even the Israelis do in the desert:
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/science/1.698275
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like their nasty thievery in stealing or withholding scarce water from the Palestinians, but they have certainly developed irrigation and water use to a high level.
And Labour could talk about enabling farmers, through smart tax exemptions, to invest in alternative irrigation methods that also save our environment. So much more can be done, but why go back to simple black and white tax or subsidise policies, that the industry will attack and fight with all means?
Wait for Federated Farmers to put adverts in major papers again, attacking Labour.
Also environmentalism deserves to be done smartly, not just by being punitive and simplistic, and here in NZ we have a lot of catch up to do in that regard.
Why for instance is the Green Party not going full steam to ban ALL one way plastic bags and packaging, and to do away with waste full stop?
It is the fear of the middle class urban voter, the consumerist, the waster, the car driver, that makes them focus only on ‘swimmable rivers’ and such easy topics, same as Labour does try to appeal by using simple slogans and easy, superficial, useless policy.
There is no or little boldness, how can I vote for any of them, being so weak and half hearted, the farmer is also not to blame, they may only in some numbers be nasty polluters, they need guidance and smart and constructive policy, so give them a chance.
By the way, we should encourage more collective farming, as that creates synergies, so large investments are more easily done and implemented into practice.
But no, more muddling through, from not only Nats, but even Labour and Greens, give me a break, thanks.
100% Marc.
I felt this too.
David Parker should have turned the question on SS Joyce by accusing him of planning the next round of sell-offs of NZ Post, Kiwi bank, ACC, The electricity grid and more!!!!
David Parker kept right on the Topic. He knew his subject comprehensively.
Steven Joyce made a total ass of himself. As did Michelle Boag on the panel.
I would say Joyce will regret his bumbling stupidity, because no one in New Zealand wants any more pollution of water, streams, or rivers.
Except of course Steven Joyce and “head in the sand” Farmers.
And please don’t forget the buffoons who voted for this crap. They’ve had three opportunities in the last nine years to change this and they’ve simply returned a National government each time.
Real dairy milk production without the cows. Nonpolluting, takes far less room and is sustainable.
I’m sure China is already looking at this. One day our farmers will be producing a product that will not be needed by our overseas markets and that day won’t be very far away..
http://www.perfectdayfoods.com/
Cholesterol free. Lactose free.
http://www.perfectdayfoods.com/faq/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThJRUFp8vzM
‘David Wallace-Wells’ startling – and unashamedly doom ridden – essay in New York magazine, entitled ‘ The Uninhabitable Earth’
Humanity is doomed to a miserable future (or no future at all), as depicted in the Post Carbon Institute video
‘There’s no tomorrow’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg
This dismal state of affairs has occurred because all the key issues were identified decades ago, and none of them were addressed -either locally or globally- when they could have been addressed.
The looting and polluting will continue until there is nothing left to loot. The economic-political system demands it. We’ve known it for well over a decade. And the effects of pollution take a few decades to fully manifest. We’ve known that for decades too.
And ‘no one’ cares.
The laws of NZ are written to facilitate looting and polluting, and the politicians and corrupt corporate media promote looting and polluting on a daily basis. There is nothing exceptional about that; the same applies throughout the entire western money-lender-industrial empire. They’ll keep doing it till they can’t.
2020 looks like the end of the continuous expansion phase for the petroleum-based system, and the mayhem that inevitably follows as a consequence of the total lack of appropriate planning means it will be ‘all over’ around 2030.
Pity the children.
Don’t look to ANY politician to deal with any of the above: their job is to facilitate the agendas of banks, corporations and opportunists.
The good news is if can call good is farmers are not going to vote Labour anyway so Labour isn’t held to ransom I be leave the farmer should pay and clean up the mess they have made .what makes think the rest us should pay.
Farmers pay very little tax there farmers are real estate plays there farming capital gains just like land lords