‘Waiting and not knowing is not good for people’: Hawke’s Bay fruit growers wait for Govt assistance

Minister of Finance Grant Robertson has told fruit growers the Government can only do so much. Photo / Warren Buckland

The Hawke’s Bay Horticulture Growers’ Taskforce is “disappointed” at being excluded from the cyclone recovery package announced by the Government on Sunday.

A Government delegation - that included Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Cyclone Recovery Minister Grant Robertson - descended upon Taradale to promise close to $1 billion of spending to help rebuild Hawke’s Bay.

That did not include assistance for growers, who have asked for $750 million to aid the estimated $1.5 billion clean-up from Cyclone Gabrielle.

The growers’ taskforce, along with the Ministry for Primary Industries and Boston Consulting Group, has presented reports to the Government which suggest $3.5b could be lost from the Hawke’s Bay economy without immediate funding from the Crown.

Growers met with ministers and MPs on Sunday to reiterate their plight and lobby for financial assistance.

“They’ve come back to us and said they will have something for us in early June, but we don’t know what that looks like yet," Hawke’s Bay Fruitgrowers’ Association president Brydon Nisbet said.

“We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they’ll come up with something for growers. It’s extremely urgent, and we told them 10 days after the flood - when we first met with them - that urgency was the key.

“We’re three months into it now."

So far, the Government has committed $172m for silt removal. Just over $133m of that is specifically for Hawke’s Bay.

With the cost of clearing silt from orchard blocks estimated to be between $1000 to $130,000 per hectare, Nisbet suggested that Government money won’t go far.

“It will help, but it’s capped at $210,000 per entity, so if you spend a million dollars, you can still only claim $210,000, and there are lot of people who are way over that cap,” said Nisbet.

In a statement to Hawke’s Bay Today, Robertson said the Government is doing what it can.

“I am aware of the various reports about the impact on the horticulture sector," Robertson said.

“We are working through them, along with the analysis from the likes of the Ministry for Primary Industries. I appreciate the need for certainty as soon as possible about what support can be provided.

“We will be talking to the sector further over the coming weeks to identify what support the Government can provide.

“As I said when I was in Hawke’s Bay at the weekend, the Government is in this for the long haul as a partner. Equally, the Government cannot pay for everything, as I think the sector well understands.”

Silt removal has been a fulltime job at Brydon Nisbet's Puketapu orchard since Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / Mitchell Hageman.

Nisbet’s counter is that the Hawke’s Bay Horticulture Growers’ Taskforce, of which he is a member, is asking for only half of the actual clean-up costs.

“The Government know that we’re disappointed that there’s nothing for growers [at this stage], but we still believe they will come up with something significant at the beginning of June,” Nisbet said.

“But waiting and not knowing is not good for people."

Some of that disappointment stems from the belief it was the collapse of publicly owned stopbanks that caused much of the damage to horticulture.

“If the river had just gone up and over the stopbanks, there would’ve been nowhere near the damage. But when they absolutely collapsed, opening the floodgates, that was a different story.

“There was a catastrophic failure in the infrastructure, and that’s the issue.”