Confusion rules over 'structures of week'

By Philippa Stevenson

Between the lines

The dairy mega co-op could be the best thing for New Zealand and dairy farmers since milk powder was invented.

But when momentous changes are proposed, even the most optimistic are likely to want to check the sums.

And no one ever suggested that farmers were optimistic.

So there is no surprise at the wave of concern that has rolled off the hills and into the special parliamentary select committee set up, in farmers' eyes, to rush through the deregulation of their industry.

The same wave is also pooling around the contest for the election of a director for the Te Awamutu ward of New Zealand Dairy Group.

It is no coincidence that the man who holds the seat, Dairy Board chairman John Storey, is facing a challenge for the first time in 20 years.

Mr Storey favours the new structure for the industry. He has fronted it, and openly endorses the idea of external investment in the industry.

While the last is an anathema to many farmers and reason enough to roll him, it also doesn't help that Mr Storey crossed a few people on the way to the top.

But the mega co-op proposal has more problems than those caused by a reluctance to change, and personality conflicts.

It has been oversold. It has suffered about-faces. It suddenly became linked to immediate deregulation in a deal that appeared to be cobbled together in backrooms by old mates Graham Calvert and Sir William Birch. It has been changed on the hoof.

And it has been done at speed because of (take your pick) the upcoming general election, staff and customer anxiety, the loss of profits.

Who was not stunned by the claim that a $7 billion industry could turn into a $40 billion one in just 10 years? Especially a business which had, at best, only been keeping its head above water.

No wonder farmer Suzanne Bruce told the select committee that "absolute confusion reigns where a sound detailed plan should be. We sit back and wait for the 'structure of the week'."

She has appealed for a mediation forum which could appoint "proper" legal and accounting representatives to advise farmers. She will need lots of luck.

Sadly, New Zealand's agricultural intellectuals have not proved numerous enough to provide the desperately needed independent, objective analysis of one of the most far-reaching proposals the country has seen.

They have been silenced by a combination of present or past commissions, either for the dairy industry, or regulators.

Farmers, overwhelmed with the arrival of the latest crop of calves, are also being asked to attend the birth of a new business.

But they will have to decide on their own reckoning whether it will live to see the light of day.