Placed-based privilege
VIa the ill-considered utterances of Matt King (‘I’m no climate change denier’) and Todd Muller (‘crisis of confidence’), the farming-sector equivalent of racial separatism and race-based privilege has been carefully hatched into the political arena.
Farmers are now victims of the latest fad in ‘radical’ bigotry, often derided as veganism, with its villainous aim of extracting more taxes from our poor ‘family-friendly’ primary producers.
“City dwellers” apparently “condemn farmers while eating their produce,” just like racially divisive Ma¯ ori and left wing SJW activists condemn white European people while using their modern-day systems, technology, and, above all, welfare.
It’s the sort of absurd claim made by small, fanatical bands of alt-right zealots cunningly disguised in blue suits, or NZCPR, swearing ultimate allegiance to Don Brash.
Divisiveness is indeed their stock in trade, matched only by defensiveness. City dwellers eat their produce, and also pay their piper in innumerable ways.
The minuscule number of dairy farmers, who Todd Muller misrepresents as 0.2 per cent of the population when they’re more likely nearer 1 per cent, could never afford the roads, amenities and services infrastructure provided by the mass-taxpayer state. Likewise, these few dairy farmers could never own 2.1 million hectares, or 15.1 per cent, of Aotearoa New Zealand’s agricultural land if at least some of it had not originally been nefariously acquired from Ma¯ ori.
Nor could dairying have increased its land area by 22.6 per cent (2002 - 2016) while the actual number of dairy farms decreased by the same amount, if forces other than ye olde family farm were not at play — corporate farming, offshore ownership?
Finally, from a simple numbers perspective, a false-flag ‘war’ between cockies and townies seems just plain dumb. Eighty-six per cent of New Zealanders live in urban areas, 72 per cent in main centres. Are these really ACT and National’s new ‘villains,’ hellbent on seeing New Zealand fail? WALLY HICKS
Kohukohu