emissions tax

The Prime Minister's confident he'll find common ground with farmers over He Waka Eke Noa, but has stopped short of promising it pre-election.

He Waka Eke Noa is the Government sector group tasked with pricing agricultural emissions, meant to kick in from 2025.

Chris Hipkins today ruled out a fertiliser tax after opposition from the industry, saying he wants instead to make the emissions scheme work.

He says he still has faith in that plan.

"I'm meeting with the sector leaders again tomorrow to talk about it. I'm optimistic that we'll be able to get an agreement, but I'm not going to put a particular date on it."

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New Zealand farmers have called Labour’s bluff on the climate tax Labour was planning, and they’ve won this thing. 

After yesterday’s announcement from the Nats, there is now very little chance- actually probably no chance at all- that Labour will put any kind of tax on farmers before the election.

Because what happened yesterday is that farmers got hope. All they have to do is hold on for the next four months.

Don't agree to anything, wait until October, and if National and ACT get elected- and the three most recent polls say that’s what’s going to happen- they won’t be burdened with the enormous tax Labour was planning for them.

This is more egg on Labour and James Shaw’s face than many of us probably realise. Because Labour said they were going to do this. They told their supporters in 2017 that if they won the election, they would force farmers to pay for their emissions in their first term.

And here we are, at the end of their second term, if not their tenure in Government, and they haven’t been able to do it.

That'll be extremely disappointing to their supporters, who have been dying for the farmers to get their comeuppance. It's yet another delivery failure, alongside solving the housing crisis and child poverty and Light Rail to the airport. 

Labour will keep going to keep trying. They tried to threaten a nitrogen levy in the last few weeks, but as we predicted on the show- it was a bluff. It's not happening.

There's a now meeting scheduled for Thursday at Fieldays between the Prime Minister, Damien O’Connor the Agriculture Minister, James Shaw from the Greens, David Parker and the farming leaders.

And apparently, the Government’s going to propose a new idea- an R&D levy. So at least they can say to their supporters that they got something from farmers. 

But farmers don’t need to agree anymore.

Because why should they? They only have to hang on another 4 months.

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Beef + Lamb New Zealand are calling for the staged implementation of an agricultural emissions framework.

The organisation's new Board Chair, Kate Acland aims to establish robust emissions measuring, with a price on emissions not introduced until outstanding issues are resolved.

The Country's Jamie Mackay says Beef + Lamb are concerned about the disproportionate impact on their sector and its ongoing viability.

Jamie Mackay says there's a need to establish a robust on-farm system for calculating emissions while fairly recognising the carbon sequestering vegetation on farms.

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Farmer confidence in economic conditions has hit a record low, according to the latest survey from Federated Farmers.

This comes off the back of 2022's Rabobank survey, which also showed farmer confidence was at a historic low.

The Country's Jamie Mackay says farmers are primarily concerned about the emissions trading scheme, debt and bank pressure, and regulation and compliance costs.

Jamie Mackay says meat and wool farmers are the most pessimistic about the current emissions trading regulations.

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Farmer confidence is at its lowest on record, according to Rabobank's Rural Confidence Survey.

The final survey results for 2022 showcase farmer confidence is at a twenty year low, despite the sector having pulled through a fair amount of recent challenges. Farmer confidence is now at -71 per cent, from -31 per cent previously.

This lack of confidence in the industry is linked to concerns surrounding Government policies, with the proposed framework for pricing agricultural emissions causing worry amongst 68 percent of farmers. Rising interest rates and falling commodity prices are also points of concern.

The Country's Jamie Mackay says that this is a strong indictment of how farmers view the Government and how they've been handling the rural sector.

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Dairy NZ has recently taken a stand against the Government's He Waka Eke Noa tax scheme. 

The organisation has been aligned with the Government, but Chairperson Jim Van De Poel threatened to pull support unless changes were made to the tax scheme, because no deal seemed better than a bad deal to them.

Jamie Mackay, host of The Country, stated that this is a strong position for Dairy NZ to take, as they had previously established strong ties with the Government.

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The Government's new plan to make farmers pay an emissions tax isn't being well-received so far. 

In the interest of maintaining a positive reputation with the farming community, National Party Leader Chris Luxon says that National will repeal this tax scheme if elected in 2023.

Chris Luxon went on to state that this tax plan is bad for the state of the farming industry, jobs, and rural communities. 

"We're talking about one fifth of our sheep and beef industry being decimated by 2030, just in seven years time. That's a big problem for us economically. This is an industry that generates basically $9,000 dollars for every man, woman, and child in the country."

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