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A comment by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at Tuesday night’s leaders’ debate has sparked a backlash from farmers.
“If I can, it feels like the worldview that has passed,” she said, responding to comments by National Party leader Judith Collins that as a child growing up on a dairy farm, Collins was “proud as a punch” her. parents, and that farmers today were upset about environmental issues by the Labor-Green coalition.
Collins also said that “the dirty dairy” was a slogan of the Labor and Green Party.
Reactions from people who commented on social media widely perceived the comment as anti-agriculture.
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What Ardern said was: “If I may, it feels like the vision of the world that has passed. When I meet with our dairy sector, and I have to say that our primary producers as a sector that I have probably met more than any other because of this important work, they absolutely see the need for us to be competitive in this environment.
“We have Australian farmers talking now about climate change. There is an inevitability here that we have to face. But they are the ones who talk about sustainability. They are the ones who speak of regenerative agriculture ”.
Fiona Goodall / Getty Images
The comments made by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on agriculture have drawn criticism, even though they have been largely taken out of context.
Southland dairy producer Hadleigh Germann said the comment had been taken out of context a bit.
He didn’t think Ardern was saying that farming was a dying industry, but he said it was still insensitive to claim that farmers were above the sentiment Collins had highlighted.
“Farmers feel a lot of weight and uncertainty is on them at the moment. I think it is disconnected and to say that we are generally quite positive about current state affairs, I don’t think that is entirely correct.
Kavinda Herath / Things
Hadleigh Germann says Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is disconnected from farmer sentiment.
“These latest land and water plans have ignored all the effort farmers have been making around our environmental footprint. It’s kind of ‘good try, but still not good enough, so we’re re-establishing the posts and shortening the time you have to get there,’ ”he said.
Many farmers raised their hands and asked “now what?”
At a standup in Waikato on Wednesday morning, Ardern responded to the negative reaction her comment had received, saying that it was Judith Collins’ views on climate change that she said were “views of the past.”
The farmers he had been working with had been studying how the sector could be more competitive in export markets and drive higher value, he said.
