Rural community gets its chance to grill Rangitīkei candidates

Political candidates in Rangitīkei have offered their best solutions for restoring farmer confidence.

Federated Farmers Manawatū-Rangitīkei hosted a meeting for Rangitīkei electorate candidates at the Utiku Old Boys clubrooms at Taihape on Wednesday night. More than 50 people attended.

Bernard Long from the Green Party, Labour’s Zulfiqar Butt, Andrew Hoggard of ACT, National candidate Suze Redmayne and Helma Vermeulen from NZ First attended.

Many topics were covered, but rural issues were the main focus and a common theme was about how to improve the low confidence of farmers.

Redmayne said agriculture was vital for the region, including businesses, schools and community groups. She said National backed farmers to succeed, which was part of National’s plan to grow the economy.

She wanted to “get Wellington out of farming”, give farmers the tools they needed to reduce emissions, and reward farmers for carbon sequestration.

Hoggard said he had presented farmers’ confidence surveys for six years while he was with Federated Farmers and the main reason was poorly thought-out regulations, and officials getting things wrong.

“You want to improve farmers’ confidence, you need a farmer around the cabinet table reading this stuff and making these decisions and the only way you’re going to get there is party vote ACT.”

Butt said in the past six years primary industry exports had increased by 39% and last year total exports increased by $54 billion.

Long said agriculture was vital to New Zealand and was a major contributor to GDP.

“Reduce agriculture emissions at the scale and pace to protect our market, manage the risk and bring confidence to farmers, support the decision to recognise carbon sequestration, broaden that and reward people actually doing the work.”

But he said immediate action to cut agricultural emissions had to be taken.

Vermeulen said if New Zealand didn’t have a farming industry it had nothing and NZ First had two good candidates with farming backgrounds who would support the industry.

She wanted to cut red tape and have farmers out working, not in an office filling out forms.

Redmayne also wanted to remove red tape and give farmers certainty by having them come up with their own solutions.

Hoggard said farmers were unsure about how some regulations would affect them, so couldn’t invest. He instead wanted to focus on simple metrics everyone could understand.

Butt said they wouldn’t get anywhere with fighting between farmers, bureaucrats and politicians.

“We have to think about what is wrong with the Government or what is wrong with the procedures. I don’t think it’s only my way or the highway. We have to accept some expert opinion.”

Long said regulation was part of life and while the pace of it was one thing, people had to accept it and deal with it.

“What would our party do to assist confidence? Bring agriculture under the [Emissions Trading Scheme] so that this last 20 years of fighting against it is behind it and we’re all on board.”

They were asked how they would ensure the next generation of farmers had a great place to grow up and live.

Vermeulen said they had to concentrate on more products and more exports to give people the confidence to farm bigger and better.

“If the farming economy grows and you do well, the whole of the country does well.”

Redmayne said the first thing had to be to grow the economy and be strong in the support of rural communities.

“We need to make sure our roads are right, our cellphone coverage is right, to make people want to grow up and grow old here.”

Hoggard said it was about keeping costs down such as inflation.

“Good management, cutting wasteful spending, sensible regulations that allow you to go ahead and farm without red tape slowing you down. Confidence, so much of it is driven by poor regulations.”