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At Waikato today, Chris Lewis from the King Country recruitment group told Ardern, “We’ve had a bit of funding, but one of the things that we find that is really worrying right now is that we are becoming kind of a little more a rural support trust than a recruitment group.
“There is a lot of disappointment and concern among farmers about these changes in freshwater and everything else that has accumulated for them; it is not so much about what it contains, but about the timing.”
Ardern responded by saying that some of the timelines were quite long, to which Lewis said, “Some of them are also quite short.”
He said the group working to implement the rules and make them work was well represented by the industry.
But Lewis said they would like to see more farmers represented.
Ardern said Dairy NZ’s representatives were the farmers themselves, but the farmers said they were from the sheep and cattle sector, and although their representatives were farmers, the CEOs were not.
Lewis said the government’s record had put people off.
“It’s quite difficult to get buy-in from the farmers right now in the meetings we have in the hallways and other things because everyone knows someone who has also been really, foolishly, affected by the low slope map … that’s it. a surprise, it is a huge problem.
“It is really putting people off.
“Unfortunately, it has lost a lot of support with farmers and the regional council because of that, so … implementation is going to be a problem.”
