Listen: Is the Government too tough on the primary sector?

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Photo / Mark Mitchell

There are many challenges facing New Zealand agriculture as the population grows more aware of the environment and animal welfare, while climate change influences consumers' buying decisions. These issues also affect the Government, which often has to balance protecting New Zealand's "clean green" image, without damaging the economy.

Today on The Country, Jamie Mackay asked Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern if perhaps her Labour-led Coalition Government had tipped the balance, and was making it too difficult to do business in New Zealand.

However, before he tackled the political issues, Mackay could not resist asking Ardern another pressing question on the day the All Blacks team was announced - who was her favourite player when she was growing up?

Mackay: When you were a young girl growing up in Morrinsville, did you admire the All Blacks? Did you have a favourite All Black?

Ardern: Yeah, I did. I watched every game. I remember getting up during big tournaments that were played overseas to watch with my dad.

I grew up in the Waikato so I was always a big Mooloos fan. My second team - and this is purely because of this one player - my second team was always Canterbury because of Andrew Mehrtens.

I loved Andrew Mehrtens. He was just a player that when I was a bit younger, just had, you know, such a fantastic record but also had such attitude.

Mackay: An impish charm I think I would describe Merhts has having.

Ardern: Yes - impish charm! That gives you a little sense of I guess the era for me, when I was watching closely.

Mackay: Can I ask you about the Provincial Growth Fund investment in Southland, my home province. Now they've chucked money into a city centre that certainly needs to be revitalised, I think it's wonderful from an economic and tourism point of view, they've got direct flights from Invercargill to Auckland - there's the good news - the bad news is we're putting dairy farmers out of business in Southland and I was speaking to a fisherman the other day and he said "the next time you're speaking to Jacinda, ask her why Eugenie Sage is closing down our fishing grounds".

Ardern: Well ... we're not. What we've gone out to get opinion on is what we can do to make sure that we don't wipe out the last of Maui and Hector's dolphins.

So that does has an impact on different types, or the way that we fish in particular areas. We are consulting on it, so we're asking for feedback in those areas.

But - one of the reasons we have to do this is, of course, we're getting a lot of pressure from those who import fish from New Zealand to act on this, or we will feel the repercussions in other ways.

Not least because actually, of course, we need to make sure that we try and preserve these dolphins, but there is an economic consequence as well if we don't preserve and support ways to try and stop any further loss of Maui and Hector.

Mackay: Are you worried that your government is just making it a wee bit tough to do business in this country, Prime Minister?

Ardern: If you're asking on the basis of the decision around dolphins, absolutely not, because our fisheries run the risk of losing their export markets, not least actually the argument around making sure we also do our bit to find alternative ways of commercialising our fisheries that don't have dolphins as by-catch.

Listen to the full interview below:

Mackay: I'm also thinking of dairy farming and oil and gas exploration and any number of things that you've put your foot on the throat of.

Ardern: On farming, I make the same argument. I talk frequently to farmers who absolutely know the challenge that we have here. We export on our brand.

Just last week I was talking to someone who's in sheep and said they'd just been talking to a wool buyer who had asked them - an international wool buyer - their first questions were to them were "what are you doing on your environmental practice? What do you do around your waterways? What are you doing around biodiversity?" And they were willing to pay a higher price if they got the right answer.

We know this is a challenge for us in an international market. If we want to make sure we move from volume to value, we do need to get ahead of the game on some of these really
challenging issues.

Also in today's interview: Ardern discussed politicians' pay packets, and whether she is going to the Rugby World Cup.