Hoggard: Can't ‘smash through' change

Otago Daily Times

6 days ago

Associate Minister for Agriculture and for the Environment Andrew Hoggard at the Croydon Lodge on Monday, speaking on beef and lamb issues related to his portfolios. PHOTO: ELLA SCOTT-FLEMING
Act New Zealand MP Andrew Hoggard visited Gore this week to speak on issues facing local producers, including the conversion of farms to forests, but said changes to the surrounding law were not something the government could rush.
Mr Hoggard, the Minister of Biosecurity and Food Safety and Associate Minister of Agriculture, said while the rapid conversion of arable land to forestry might be a pressing concern for the farmers in the audience, it was not something the government could just "smash through".
"It's probably good that, in some respect, it isn't that easy, because you don't want governments to be able to smash stuff through," he said.
"It's good to have some checks and balances on them."
The forum was hosted by Beef + Lamb NZ at the Croydon Lodge on Monday, where Beef + Lamb senior staff gave a outline of their key policy areas, the minister touched on what related to his portfolios and the audience were then invited to raise their concerns.
The policy areas touched on by the executives and MP were global warming, forestry, biosecurity, gene technology, the Resource Management Act and fresh water.
Mr Hoggard, a former Federated Farmers president, said Act would support the trend of turning farms to forestry if it was about the price of timber but it was not.
The change was driven by the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) price, however, which had created a "false market", he said.
Due to the rise in forestry for ETS money, once the world discovered technology that rendered carbon farming obsolete, we could be left with a country covered in pines, he said.
"We're going to be left with a country that's covered in pine trees, a massive fire risk, with nothing productive happening.
"These companies will basically just walk away."
On global warming, he said if the world "walked back" its level of ambition, New Zealand would have already met that standard.
Despite this, he saw no need for New Zealand to reduce its farming.
"There is zero sense of the most carbon-efficient farming nation in the world to reduce its farming. If anything ... we don't need to be farming less, we need to be farming better."
In regard to gene technology, he said the key thing for him was co-existence, allowing space for those who wanted to be organic and GMO-free as well as those who wanted to use the latest innovation.
He said that legislative process was in the hands of a select committee.
"The last thing I want is someone from either side telling me how I have to farm," he said.
Changes to fresh water legislation was going to be messy, he said, as the government aimed to work with local government, with a variety of different needs and plans already in place.
"We are trying to build the plane as we're flying it in some cases," he said.
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