On opposite sides of the fence

With the election less than a week away rural voters are about to find who they will have representing them in Cabinet for the next three years. Liam Dann talks to the two most likely contenders for the job and finds that, although they are both Canterbury farmers, there are few issues on which Labour's Jim Sutton and National's David Carter see eye to eye.

Jim Sutton

CV
Farming
* A self-employed farmer from 1963 until entering Parliament in 1984. His farm - still in the family - covers 400ha of steep to easy rolling downs at Waihaorunga in South Canterbury, and 160ha of irrigated land in the Waitaki Valley. Special interests included livestock improvement programmes and farm forestry.
Politics
* MP for Waitaki/Timaru/Aoraki since 1984
* Minister for Agriculture and Trade Negotiations since 1999
* Currently also Minister for Biosecurity, Forestry and Associate Minister for Rural Affairs

When faced with farmer criticisms of Labour's performance over the past six years, Jim Sutton offers a simple reminder.

"Look at how you're doing," he says.

"Our rural industries have had spectacular success over the last half-dozen years."

Sutton says he is proud - not just of the sustained growth the rural economy has experienced - but of the success Labour has had in strengthening the social structures for rural communities.

"We've opened a lot of Heartland service centres which have restored a lot of face-to-face access to Government services that had been progressively lost over the years."

Sutton is well aware of the perception among farmers and the wider business sector that there has been a creeping rise in regulatory and compliance costs under Labour.

But he is not convinced it bears close analysis.

"This is something people complain about all over the world - particularly farmers in developed nations."

To an extent it is due to the increased globalisation of the economy, he says.

"When you are selling all over the world you have to meet the regulatory requirements of a whole host of customers. Our own regulatory frameworks have to provide for that, which creates a considerable burden in and of itself."

But despite that, Labour has had an ongoing policy of trying to streamline these things, he says.

"I think it's been pretty successful. Anyone who has looked at the situation in Australia will acknowledge that compliance costs of doing business are lower here."

Sutton cites the World Bank's Doing Business survey, released in September last year, which ranked New Zealand number one for "ease of doing business" out of 145 countries. The US ranked second, Singapore was third and Australia ranked fifth.

"So although every time a farmer has to fill in a form to meet a regulatory requirement it's a pain in the neck and legitimate cause of complaint, we are not doing too badly in that regard."

Sutton argues that some of the things National is promising will actually cost farmers a lot more than they pay now.

He cites ACC as an example.

For most industries ACC levies have come down in the past few years, but not for farming.

The reason is that - with just 4 or 5 per cent of the workforce - farming accounts for 50 per cent of fatalities and a huge number of injuries, says Sutton.

If ACC were left to the private sector, farmers would have to cover the full cost, he says - and they'd actually have difficulty finding insurance.

He says the Resource Management Act (RMA) - the other piece of legislation farmers love to hate - will work better after the "significant reforms" that have just gone through Parliament. Those changes will make a big difference, but they haven't had a chance to work yet.

But farmers will always be expected to meet environmental standards and to demonstrate that they meet those standards, Sutton says: "There will always be complaints about that."

There are just as many people complaining that the environmental standards are too lax, he says.

"There is a conflict there that has to be resolved and the RMA is the process by which we do it."

Sutton's work as Trade Minister is one area in which he is still earning almost universal praise.

If he gets another term in that job, he says, there are three things he would like to achieve.

They include: completing the Doha round of World Trade Organisation negotiations; completing the free-trade agreement with China; and taking the first formal first steps towards a free-trade agreement with the US.

Biosecurity is another area where Sutton says the Labour Government has served farmers well.

"We inherited a real mess," he says.

"Thank God there wasn't a foot-and-mouth outbreak in the 1990s ... we would have been stuffed."

* * *

David Carter

CV
Farming
* Has a 2500 stock unit farm on Banks Peninsula and a 10,000 stock unit farm at Waiau, in North Canterbury. Has a Bachelor of Agricultural Science from Lincoln. By 1974, had established a commercial cattle embryo transplant company and helped establish breeds such as simmental, charolais and limousin in New Zealand.
Politics
* Elected to Parliament in 1994 as MP for Selwyn and won Banks Peninsula in 1996. Since 1999, has been a list MP
* Was a junior minister in the National Government from 1998-1999
* Currently spokesman for agriculture and housing

Like Jim Sutton, National's David Carter believes farmers should be "very focused on Labour's performance over the past three years".

Not surprisingly, he has a different take on how they should interpret that performance.

"Commodity prices have been strong and farmers have done reasonably well," he says. "But the Government has taken the opportunity of slagging the sector with a huge number of new taxes."

The costs of doing business are definitely higher now than they were when Labour came to power, he says.

"My genuine worry is that as commodity prices come off their peak - as they inevitably will - we're going to be saddled with a cost structure that makes us internationally uncompetitive."

Carter totally rejects Sutton's argument that we are comparatively less regulated than our international competitors.

"I would say to Jim Sutton: go and talk to farmers. There isn't a farmer in New Zealand who would say that compliance costs are lower now than they were six years ago."

He cites an AgResearch report - released in April - which showed that dairying in New Zealand was now less cost efficient than in South American countries.

As for specific issues facing farmers this election, Carter believes the threat of land access laws is still top of the pile. He doesn't buy the Labour line that the original proposal has been shelved and will be subject to a serious rethink after the election.

"Helen Clark and Jim Sutton have come along and suggested that the public have the right to wander over privately owned land. That's just incensed farmers around the country."

Carter says he believes it will be back on the agenda if Labour wins and that if Labour forms a coalition with the Greens it is likely to be one of the first things they look at. Labour has established a panel of interested parties to look at the issue and report back before any legislation is drafted. That panel is chaired by a farmer.

However, the bottom line is that the party says it "is still committed to certain, free, practical, and enduring public access along public water and public land of significance".

Carter is equally at odds with Sutton's views when it comes to issues like ACC.

The idea that competition in the work place insurance market would cost farmers more was "ridiculous", he said.

"Labour's policy has cost farmers," he says. "Despite personal assurances from Sutton saying costs will not increase - hello, hello - they are up at least double and in some places triple."

He says the latest farm accident rates he has seen show a decline "and yet still rates go up".

"You won't get efficiency into ACC when its run by a government monopoly."

Carter does grudgingly accept that Sutton has done "reasonably" well on trade. But that is largely an apolitical area, he says.

"In being a reasonable minister of trade he has not put any initiative or effort into being a reasonable minister of agriculture," he says. "The minister of agriculture is meant to represent the interests of farmers around the Cabinet table and we've had ridiculous issues like the fart tax."

Carter says the agriculture minister needs to be prepared to listen to farmers and organisations like Federated Farmers "instead of just fighting with them".

National's policy has been developed after a lot of consultation with farmer groups up and down the country. It includes a major overhaul of the Resource Management Act and New Zealand's withdrawal from the Kyoto Agreement.

Carter acknowledges that during the 90s National did drift away from some of the "genuine concerns" farmers had.

But the National caucus was now completely focused on the importance of agriculture to the economy, he said.

"The good performance of the economy over the past six years has been because of agriculture."

* * *

Green Party

The Green Party's agriculture policy, announced in Blenheim last week, aims to make New Zealand the "organic food basket of the world".

The policy plans to take New Zealand organic products beyond the niche market, and aims to have half the country's production certified organic by 2020, including wine production.

It provides for the prohibition of cross-boundary spray drift, levies for the use of agrichemicals and a nitrogen level tax.

Revenue from these taxes is intended to provide incentives for producers to be certified organic and pay for signs and fencing for landowners with public access through their properties.

The policy also proposes introducing a requirement for all exported food and fibre products to be certified as "sustainable and fairly produced".

- NZPA