City dudes drive ute tax

Ihave to hand it to the Groundswell farmers. They got my full attention on Friday. That’s because I was ten minutes into a fivehour road trip to a gig, when I realised that tractors had invaded the motorway. They barrelled along like tanks, crushing my soul while brandishing subtle, ‘‘Cindy is Stalin’’ signs.

Naturally, that was the moment I realised I had to pee. So after several agonising centuries of screaming at them, we eventually crawled into a service station. Sausage rolls were scattered, coffees were splattered, children in front were flattened with a barrage of blueberry muffins as I tore into the cubicle . . .

But after I peed, and regained my humanity, I looked up why the cast of Country Calendar had colonised the highway. Which, I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t been stuck in traffic.

And yep, poncy city slicker that I am, I felt sorry for them. Not for all of it. But definitely for their anger over the ute tax, which was flagged as one of the key points of Friday’s outrage. See farmers are right to be mad at city dwellers for what we’ve done to these once unpretentious, unremarkable sheds-on-wheels.

It’s not quite right to characterise the ute tax as a tax on hardworking farmers in utes to fund poncy urbanites in zippy electric cars. Rather, it’s a tax on hardworking farmers in utes, fuelled by poncy urbanites in even more utes, which has meant we all now need to really, really stop buying these ozone eaters.

The majority of people who own utes, and there are a lot of them, aren’t farmers or tradies. Only 10 per cent of utes in NZ are registered with the New Zealand Transport Agency as work vehicles. Everyone else is using them for personal use. And that’s because the ute is the new avocado; the ultimate, divisive symbol of gentrification and middle class consumerism.

Utes never used to be fancy. They were for driving over your farm, a sheep under each arm, squinting out with a grizzled, chiseled, thousand mile stare. But in the last decade, car dealers saw the kind of rugged manliness utes embodied, and realised they could sell that to suburban dudes with something to prove.

Utes got a makeover, going from embodying gumboots-and-gaffer-tape to cashed-up-bogan modern manliness. Now the ‘burbs are full of personal trainers, sales execs and line managers buying big, black cars that look like something a drug dealer drives on his day off.

It was the swell of middle class consumers that made Toyota Hilux, Mitsubishi AX, and Ford Ranger the three most popular cars in NZ in 2021. It also has fuelled the general consumer trend towards bigger, brasher SUVs and Range Rovers, so now everyone can swagger through traffic like a commuting Clint Eastwood.

(I should point out that I’m equally vain in my car-shopping; I like to drive small, pretentious European cars that scream, ‘‘young woman with delusions of grandeur trying to look ‘individual’ in a generic way.’’ And if they started taxing cute cars, I’d start paying for my vanity.)

So farmers are right to be mad at urbanites; it’s our middle class vanity that’s caused these gas guzzlers to become absurdly ubiquitous. And that has heavily underlined the need to dramatically reduce our carbon footprint, improve the accessibility of EVs and de-incentivise buying these planet-killers.

But no, that’s not the farmers’ fault. They didn’t realise that the long, tanned, toned arm of gentrification would come for their trucks and rural masculinity. Now they have to pay the price.

No wonder they hate us.