If tractor sales are the barometer of success for Fieldays exhibitors this week, then adoring throngs gathered are the equivalent for politicians.
I’ve been a regular attendee at Fieldays since the mid-90s, meaning I’ve seen Jim Bolger, Jenny Shipley, Helen Clark, John Key, Bill English and Jacinda Ardern come and go. And it would be fair to say that only two of those prime ministers, past and present, have enjoyed rock star status at Mystery Creek.
I fondly (sort of, if you excuse the fog diversion from Hamilton airport), remember picking up a fellow stranded traveller for the drive down to the ‘Tron from Auckland. It must have been about 2012 or 2013, because David Shearer was the then leader of the Labour Party.
Like me, and any number of other passengers who were diverted to Auckland, he needed to make his way to Fieldays. We had a rental car. He was (in true egalitarian Labour fashion) going to take a bus. We had a spare seat. I insisted he hitch a ride. He obliged and we thoroughly enjoyed his company, even stopping to broadcast our midday radio show on the side of the road somewhere near Huntly.
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I’m far from being a paid-up member of the Labour Party but I’ve often thought Shearer, given the chance, could have made a good prime minister. His problem was he just couldn’t stand in front of a television camera and deliver a soundbite off the cuff, in the fashion of the two rock star PMs I’m about to talk about.
So, when we eventually arrived at Mystery Creek, some four hours late, we were wandering in and no one, I kid you not, even made a cursory glance in Shearer’s direction. I don’t think anyone even recognised him. A bit of a problem for a PM wannabe, I would have thought.
The only passer-by to engage with us was Damien O’Connor, these days Minister of Agriculture and Trade, who ribbed his boss by saying to him, “What are you doing here with that Tory bastard?” I assumed it was a good-natured reference to yours truly.
Mind you, back in the day, Damien was never shy when it came to firing from the lip. Remember this was the bloke who, in 2011, had to apologise for saying Labour’s list selection was dominated by “self-serving unionists and a gaggle of gays”. You just couldn’t get away with that sort of stuff in the enlightened times of 2022!
Barely had we encountered Damien’s comedic coarse retort, when we turned a corner to be greeted by throngs of people, including an inordinately large number of excited teenage girls. In a scene reminiscent of the Pied Piper, all attention was focused on one man, as they dutifully followed him. That man was the prime minister of the day, John Key. From 2009, until he stepped aside in late 2016, he received unprecedented adoration at Mystery Creek.
Former prime minister John Key at Niwa's Fieldays exhibit with former minister Steven Joyce. Photo / Stephen Barker
That was until a woman, who once worked in a Morrinsville fish and chip shop, and proudly claimed to have “bunked off school to go to the Fieldays” turned up at Mystery Creek in 2018, in her capacity as prime minister.
Jacinda Ardern certainly gave Key a good run when it came to star power in those early days of her tenure in 2018 and 2019.
The first Covid lockdown put paid to Fieldays in June 2020, but we managed to sneak one past the goalie in 2021, in-between lockdowns. By June 2021 though, it would be fair to say, the novelty was well and truly wearing off both the Covid response and the Government.
Fieldays 2022, Covid-postponed until summer for the first time in its more than 50-year history, will be a real litmus test for the Government and its often-fraught relationship with rural New Zealand.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern flanked by Kieran McAnulty and Grant Robertson at Fieldays in 2021. Photo / Caitlan Johnston
Farmers are facing a tsunami of regulatory change – climatic, environmental and financial. Some of it necessary, some of it downright poorly put together and unworkable.
In a case of don’t shoot the messenger, Agriculture Minister O’Connor, a loyal henchman for Government policy, is the most likely to be facing the music at Mystery Creek.
I witnessed first-hand at AgFest in Greymouth, the only other rural field days to have got off the ground in 2022, the frustration and negativity that greeted O’Connor. And that was in his own home patch! But Damien, with his fiery Irish heritage, is nothing if not up for a scrap.
The reception Ardern gets, providing of course she’s there, will be interesting. Like Key, she’s a consummate performer in public. Regardless of your political leanings, there should always be respect for the office of Prime Minister. How much is shown at Mystery Creek will be intriguing.
