New tax no joy for farmers
Agriculture tax, water tax, fertiliser tax, environmental footprint tax - WTF Labour government… is this what your tax working group has come up with?
Let’s hope these ridiculous taxes never come to pass or Taxcinda will have an agricultural revolution on her hands.
And because these proposed taxes will not immediately affect the majority of the voters (only a hard-working minority of farmers and growers), God knows what unthinking support they might garner.
Who gets a say on these taxes? Or can the farmer-hating Labour/ Green coalition do what they like?
Some or all of the above taxes will skittle this country economically overnight sending already struggling farmers bankrupt with the rest of the country close behind.
What government or media or population attacks the very people that feed them? But in New Zealand that is exactly what has been happening and if you look overseas to the UK, US and Australia exactly the same thing is happening. At least Donald Trump is saying Make Our Farmers Great Again but he will do that through subsidies, which we have weaned ourselves off many years ago.
Some other countries are not as stupid – they do not propose to tax their food growers into oblivion. Many go the other way and protect their food supplies through subsidies. I am not asking for a subsidy but I am outraged that the government can be this stupid.
Farming is bloody hard work, mentally, physically and financially. If farmers weren’t already feeling under the pump this disgusting vote of no confidence in agriculture will be making them feel why bother!
Why do I bother, why did dad bother and why did granddad bother, carving productive land out of nothing and improving it generation after generation to make this country great.
New Zealand’s agricultural industry is built on the back of hard work. It all starts in New Zealand when someone goes to work, killing a beast, shearing a sheep, milking a cow.
The money comes into the country because other people want to eat the surplus of food we grow and from that has grown systems, banks and airports, hospitals, roads, schools… but the bankers, pilots, teachers and politicians have somehow become so removed from the food on their plate that they have built up an unfathomable grudge against people feeding animals grass to make food for humans.
The people making the decisions do not get it. They have forgotten where food comes from. They must think that after they have taxed the NZ farmer to death, someone else will provide.
If society cannot tolerate what a farmer has to do to produce meat and milk, then how can it tolerate the clearing of land to build houses? But of course we tolerate these things because we have to have them – farming is not different.
No farmers no food.