Foreign buyers and cyclone recovery hot topics during Christopher Luxon’s Tukituki visit

National Party leader discussed rural issues alongside National Party agriculture spokesperson Todd McClay and Tukituki candidate Catherine Wedd during his Tukituki visit on Thursday. Photo / Paul Taylor

A National Party promise to ban foreign buyers from converting farmland to forests was met with cheers and applause during National Party leader Christopher Luxon’s visit to Tukituki.

Key issues for the attendees during a visit to the Mt Erin Station woolshed were the conversion of farmland to forestry, disaster recovery and climate change.

Luxon told the room early on that the Labour Party has “gone to war with agriculture”, before National Party agriculture spokesperson Todd McClay outlined some of the 19 changes to rules and regulations under National’s farming policy, including a ban on foreign investors buying farms to turn into carbon farming.

Luxon told Hawke’s Bay Today that even though foreign buyers were not the majority of those converting land to forestry, it was still important to protect New Zealand’s rural communities.

“We don’t believe it is appropriate that foreigners can come in and buy up good sheep and beef land and turn it into forestry, just for the exclusionary purposes of getting carbon credits and taking those credits offshore.”

Jerf van Beek, orchardist and Hawke’s Bay regional councillor, told Luxon he would like to see the National Party remove legislative barriers to recovery for Hawke’s Bay growers if another disaster like Cyclone Gabrielle happened again.

Hawke’s Bay local Neil Chambers asked what National’s solution to getting rid of cyclone rubbish would be, referring to the idea that burning some could be more efficient but current legislation prevents it.

Luxon said he did not know enough about the specific issue, but National had supported the Government with full emergency powers to go over the top of legislation and spend what was needed to get things done for the recovery.

“Now we need to get going, because we don’t want to be sitting here having a conversation in October [about how] we are going to miss another orchard season because we didn’t [make] it clear to everyone about what we were doing and how we are going to invest to get the show back on the road.”

In response to a query about what National would do about climate change, Luxon said they would reduce consenting processes to one year at most for renewable energy projects and investments.

“We already have an industry that wants to invest 30 billion dollars in the next 25 years in renewable electricity,” he said.

“It takes two years to build a wind farm and it can power 75 to 100 thousand homes, but it takes eight years to do resource consenting.”

Another promise that could impact Hawke’s Bay growers was doubling the allocation under the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme (RSE) to 38,000 over the next five years.

Luxon told Hawke’s Bay Today that employers currently have to pay overseas workers under the Accredited Employers scheme, separate from RSE workers, “well above the median rates”.

“We want them to be appropriate rates that are consistent with the local market here - we think that is important,” Luxon said.

Key issues for the attendees at the Mt Erin Station woolshed meeting were the conversion of farmland to forestry, carbon sequestering and credits, disaster recovery and education. Photo / Paul Taylor

He said their promise to resume live exports includes ensuring “gold-standard” animal welfare on ships and at their destination.

“That means dedicated ships with air conditioning, ventilation, density rules, water and all of the foodstuffs that we need set up on those ships. There are very few of those ships; they are very expensive, about $100 million each, but that is the standard that we would expect all New Zealand livestock to be moved on,” Luxon said.

“New Zealand isn’t a place where we can just destroy huge sectors of our economy. Half a billion of lost revenue in kiwifruit because we don’t have RSE workers, half a billion dollars lost in live animal exports because we haven’t enforced higher animal welfare standards.”