Party time

One day last week a couple of men were sitting on plastic chairs on a makeshift deck overlooking one of Northland's verdant valleys and discussing the meaning of rural life. These good Kiwi blokes have worked with their hearts, heads and hands to forge life positions from the land of the country they love and if material attributes are taken into consideration, they can be viewed as successful, too.

Except recently, Ken Rintoul and Joe Carr have become increasingly frustrated, concerned, even somewhat fearful and certainly fed up with what they see as a creeping erosion of old-fashioned values, a chipping away of our national tangible and aesthetic assets, devolution of our provincial and rural strengths by a government that 'panders to the city consumer element' and a country losing its sovereignty.

In plainer language they don't like the way New Zealand-and in particular the rural sector-is being run so in June they formed a new political party. It's hasty to call it fully-fledged since there is still a considerable amount of work to be done but they have the name-NZ Rural Party-a website that lists their core concerns, a group of ten working on the semantics of legitimate party status and a constitution and 600 names already on a database.

At the end of November The NZ Rural Party will hold its first public meeting in Okaihau but before then, and increasingly, they are being contacted by those of like mind.

''Hundreds of people have emailed us and from all around New Zealand since we started' says Joe Carr. ''We seem to be resonating with so many who share our frustration.''

Some who have been in touch include former high-ranking MPs, experts in various fields and a number of 'switched on' people, but mostly it's provincial folk-the very people, ironically, who form the backbone of the National Party-who feel increasingly impotent against the burgeoning influence of big business, metropolitan clout and pernicious bureaucracy that stymies progress. 'We used to hold National's values,'' says Ken Rintoul. ''But National now seems to be trying to out-Labour even Labour.''

In 2014 they will field candidates in the general election but as a relatively small blip on the political horizon can the NZ Rural Party seriously expect to make any impact in Wellington?

''Look at the Maori Party'' exclaims Joe Carr.' Four people holding the balance of power!''

Statistically farmers make up6%of the population while the provincial community is 22%.Including forestry and other rural workers the entire rural population is less than 25% of the whole and yet-and this is where the NZ Rural Party believes it can generate political persuasiveness-the rural sector contributes 60% of the country's export gross domestic product.

Should other political parties be concerned? The word on the street is yes indeed. Neither Joe Carr nor Ken Rintoul would resile from lusty debate and what they bring to the political arena is clout of their own through a considerable professional network, a strong attachment to the land and the backing of others with rural and provincialinfluence.www.nzrural.org.nz