Walker is wide of the mark
Farmers have an active (tending towards hyperactive) supporter in CluthaSouthland MP Hamish Walker. Full marks for effort but when he is feeling politically pugilistic, which happens a lot, he has been known to swing and miss.
That is what he has done this time. Brandishing a new study that finds four-fifths of the dominant faecal pollution in Southland rivers comes from geese, swans, gulls and ducks, he has rather huffily called on Fish & Game to apologise to farmers.
Science has ‘‘caught up’’ with the way these guys have been diverting disproportionate attention to farmers, he reckons.
That is a simplistic approach. Much like a sighing teacher, Southland Fish & Game boss Zane Moss points out that the bugs in some sorts of poo are different from, and more problematic than, those in other sorts of poo.
The faecal contamination likely to make people sick comes from farm animals – a message also underscored by Environment Southland science manager and the report’s author, Dr Elaine Moriarty. She says the risk of illness after swimming in a river that contains bird pollution is low – certainly compared with the risk of swimming in a river tainted by much smaller quantities from ruminant sources.
And human ones, she rightly adds – which brings us to a wider perspective. It is undeniable that townies have not been doing our rivers any favours with the standard of their offerings into the passage of water through the Southland flood plains.
Perhaps Walker, on the same basis that he sought an apology from Fish & Game, should himself apologise to the birds when his own species is such an offender.
On a less fatuous note, much of the churning frustration being felt by the farming community is that the great majority of them are under no delusions about the need to address problems with the quality of our national waterways.
They acknowledge that within their own ranks there have been some whose practices have been frankly shameful. But they are highly aggrieved that, as they see it, the public reproach for the farming sector has been delivered in blunderbuss fashion, rather than more appropriately targeted.
Maybe so. And it has certainly been the case that the standards officially required of them, and of our civic authorities managing human waste treatment, have themselves been inadequate for a long time. Problematic pollution has not always been the result of broken rules. It has also been a matter of inadequate rules.
Walker has been insisting that many farmers will be mentally and financially crippled by the Government’s ‘‘anti-ag policies’’, notably the Essential Freshwater proposals.
The intention is hardly ‘‘anti-ag’’ but that scarcely means that the consequences cannot be. And much as Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor has been hammering the message that the Government is prepared to be flexible, there is certainly scope for concern about how diligently the authorities will be assessing the mountain of feedback on those proposals.
There have been about 1000 submissions deemed ‘‘substantive’’, an interesting figure since something like 17,000 were received.
That is a lot of not-so-substantive material. In this respect it would seem submissions to the Government are a bit like the poo in our rivers – not all of it is created equal. We do, however, need the examination process to be conducted carefully.