In a farming week dominated by a soggy start to spring, a slight fall in dairy prices and the decline of our national sheep flock to just 27.34 million, one story has dominated the rural headlines.
Labour's proposed water tax, and let's not water it down by calling it a
royalty, has really antagonised farmers. And it's probably fair to say quite a bit of fake news, to use Trump vernacular, has been bandied about by both sides of the argument.
Wily old Winston, he of the self-satisfied Cheshire cat grin disposition, has led the charge with his anecdotal $18 cabbages.
For her part, the effervescently charming Jacinda Ardern has channelled her own "I'm happy to be the MP for Tauranga" rhetoric with her constant reminders of her rural upbringing in Morrinsville and how she hasn't given up on the farmer vote. If that's the case she has a strange way of showing her affection!
Every man and his dog have been happy to wade in. The likes of the Greens, Greenpeace and Forest and Bird in the red corner, with the Nats, New Zealand First, Federated Farmers and Irrigation New Zealand in the blue corner.
The latter organisation even publically challenged Jacinda (she's only been in the job two minutes and already she's known only by her Christian name, an honour reserved for the likes of Winston and Richie) to answer the questions New Zealanders deserve to know when it comes to the water tax.
I put some of them to her, and added my own two cents (no water royalty pun intended), on my show last week. Here are a couple of her interesting answers:
JM: Why is it fair to tax some types of commercial water use and not tax others? Everyone is happy to tax water bottlers, that industry has driven this tax, but it seems like it's just water bottlers and farmers, no one else?
JA: Let's be clear water bottlers will pay a higher rate. The equivalent of a royalty between gold versus gravel. But other users already pay. Anyone with a commercial operation hooked into a municipal supply will be paying their council. My understanding is Coca Cola pays a dollar per 1000 litres and what we're talking about for farmers is 1-2 cents.
JM: If the tax varies depending on water scarcity, water quality and weather conditions, then how many different tax rates will there be? Surely the compliance and metering costs will be a nightmare?
JA: We'll aim for simplicity on this but if we went in the other direction with one flat rate, people would cry foul on that too. Someone taking water from a pristine aquifer, bottling it and shipping it off to China should pay a higher rate than someone irrigating their farm. I want to make sure all the issues that have been raised by our farming community are taken into account. I want to do this together. I don't see it as adversarial, it shouldn't be. We all know that we've got an issue. Lots of farmers are doing so much good work to try to rectify it. We want to keep doing that work with them.
Soothing and conciliatory words indeed from Jacinda but I reckon you've got to back 10 elections to 1987 and Rogernomics since we've had such a 'them and us' election.
The battle lines are drawn. I can't recall a time in my 23 years in the rural media when's there's been such a rural-urban divide over issues such as water quality. There are many urban folk who are quite happy to see polluting farmers pay to clean up our waterways, even though their own municipal authorities are major polluters in many cases.
Make no mistake, for better or worse, farming will become an increasingly regulated and compliance-driven business should a centre-left government be first past the post in our MMP election.
However a lot of non-taxed water has to cross under the bridge before September 23 and even more before the November 12 departure of our farming and sightseeing tour to the southern states of the USA.
On the menu is jambalaya and jazz in New Orleans, a Mississippi steamboat river cruise, the NASA Space Centre in Houston, Elvis's Graceland home in Memphis, the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, the Jim Beam Distillery and Kentucky bluegrass thoroughbred country in Lexington, the Muhammad Ali Centre and Churchill Downs in Louisville and hopefully, along the way, Steven Adams and the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Add to the mix, farm visits to the likes of a sprawling Texas cattle ranch, an intensive housed dairy farm and a Kentucky horse stud and you have an ideal post-election breather. And the best bit is for farmers, it's a legitimately claimable expense.
Unless, of course, Jacinda decides to tax that too!
