14 minute read
Opinion
NZ rejects the herd mentality
Alternative View
Alan Emerson
LAST week saw a high-level conference on our relationship with China. It is in my view a special relationship that goes back to the early 1970s, when the then Labour Government invited China to have an embassy here. It was the first in the so-called free world.
That relationship has grown since to the extent we were the first country to have a Free Trade Agreement with China.
The conference was interesting in that it was frank and honest while not being sabre rattling.
Our position with China has upset a few of our ‘friends’.
My position is simple. I am extremely proud of the fact we are an independent democracy. We have stood independently on many issues from nuclear ship visits to nuclear tests in the Pacific, extolling free trade, advocating for arms control and having a strong and independent voice at the United Nations.
That independent stance has made the other members of the Five Eyes spy network, Australia, Canada, the US and the UK apoplectic.
The issue is that Five Eyes is a spy agency that wants to get into issues such as human rights. Anything it would seem to embarrass China.
Five Eyes started as a joint intelligence agency between the US and UK back in 1941 when we were fighting Hitler. In 1946, Winston Churchill expanded it when he talked about “the special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the USA”. A lot of things have changed since 1946, including there not being a British Empire.
It was set up to “monitor the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc”. The Soviet Union doesn’t exist as such, and we trade with both Russia and members of the Eastern Bloc.
Then in the late 1990s word finally got out that it actually existed. Until then, for the previous 50 years it had been totally behind closed doors. It was described as a “super national intelligence organisation that doesn’t answer to the laws of its own countries”.
A simple example is Five Eyes spying on another country’s citizens to circumvent the laws of that country.
It’s never been the subject of parliamentary scrutiny in New Zealand or anywhere else.
Logic would suggest that while the security interests with the Five Eyes countries could align, the social commentary certainly doesn’t. Just think of America and ex-President Trump. I even have a problem with Boris Johnson. Australia – need I say more?
NZ, to its credit, has said that while it is a member of the Five Eyes security network, it won’t extend it beyond intelligence gathering. In a major speech late last month Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta set out the Government’s objections to Five Eyes proposed social commentary. I totally agree with that position.
The issue was that Five Eyes, minus NZ, admonished China for its treatment of the Uyghur people. We were criticised roundly for that position. I was offended by one pompous, rounded vowelled and chinless British politician criticising us for our lack of commitment to Five Eyes.
The Australians waxed lyrically as you’d expect, even suggesting we were “free loading”. We weren’t. Our position was merely to reject the herd mentality.
China is a major trading partner and a friend. To get involved in a slanging match with that country does us no favours.
Just think of the international and trade implications.
The US, under the Biden administration, has said that China needs to be reined in. Why would we want to be part of that scenario?
Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton said that conflict shouldn’t be discounted with China. I thought it was an amazing statement and he should concentrate on taking the trash out but again, do we want to be part of that debate? Not to be outdone, the UK has accused us of cosying up to China’s communist rulers. They must still think the empire is alive and well.
Australia brashly criticised China and is paying for it with trade sanctions. Do we want to try and win a debating point and substantially lose trade as Australia has?
We then had a colossal own goal by the ACT Party who want Parliament to debate a motion declaring China’s oppression of the Uyghur people an act of genocide.
I’m not supporting the treatment of the Uyghur people, but the world is a nasty place. According to Wikipedia, we’ve had eight acts of genocide in the last short while and there has been little commentary from anyone.
So why would ACT put petty politics above common sense? Why would it put political point scoring above our country’s wealth?
As I said at the start, I’m proud of NZ’s independent foreign policy.
I don’t believe trade is above politics. What I do believe is that we should make our own decisions irrespective of international power plays, positioning and politics.
FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS: Alan Emerson believes getting involved in a slanging match China will do us no favours.
Your View
Alan Emerson is a semi-retired Wairarapa farmer and businessman: dath.emerson@gmail.com
Parliament needs some introspection
From the Ridge
Steve Wyn-Harris
WHAT’S going on in Parliament? I suspect a combination of frustration, leadership anxiety, leadership ambition, a majority complacency and just the usual carry on.
Let’s start with ACT first. Why the hell is David Seymour and company so determined to piss off our biggest trading partner? I know it’s the view of an exporter but that’s what I am. If it were the Green’s pushing this, I wouldn’t be surprised.
ACT tried to get Parliament to pass a motion that China is engaged in genocide in the north west in the Xinjiang province.
The Labour government resisted using the term genocide, which to date has only applied to Nazi Germany, Cambodia and Rwanda, and had it watered down to ‘severe human rights abuses’ are occurring there.
Yes, we all know that what China is doing to the Uighurs is not good as there is credible evidence of human rights abuse, but our Parliament passing any sort of worded motion censuring and lecturing China is not going to make one iota of difference to the Uighurs situation.
If ACT genuinely wanted to make a difference to these people, why are they not calling for large numbers to be offered sanctuary here, or sums of money and aid to be sent to them?
They are doing it to embarrass the Government and thus score political points, but in the process putting our trade and exports in jeopardy. China may not need us greatly but for better or worse, we have hitched ourselves to their economy and rely heavily on it.
I know that I’m putting pragmatism in front of principle, but if prodding China only antagonises rather than forces a behavioural change, why bother? Use more effective measures to force change rather than proposing ineffectual words and a whole lot of hot air.
I’ve checked out the ACT website and their mission is all about public policy and their 16 principles are all focused onshore – and not a single mention of this nation being the world’s conscience.
Only a few months ago, they were calling for the abolition of NZ’s own Human Rights Commission.
And why stop at China? Myanmar has been appalling with their ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya; the Central African Republic, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Afghanistan and South Sudan are all countries committing gross human rights abuses right now. Perhaps they will be their next causes if this is the new focus of that party.
Now, let’s have a crack at Trevor Mallard, the speaker of the house. He was never well-suited to this role, as he’s been a bovver boy all his political career. He even had a fight with Tau Henare in Parliament back in 2007.
He’s shown bad judgement in his public utterances over the sexual complaints from parliamentary staff and it cost us, the taxpayer, $300,000 in a defamation case. Again, he went too far last week and showed a complete lack of judgement. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gave him a public dressing down and said his conduct was “totally inappropriate”. If he doesn’t leave Parliament in the next two years, it’s hard to see his political career extending another term. His time is up.
There is no love lost between him and National’s Chris Bishop, since Bishop took Mallard’s seat off him for a term. Bishop also went too far in his determination to get a political scalp and has politicised what must be an exceedingly difficult situation for the complainant in this matter. It’s no wonder women are reluctant to complain or press charges in these cases and the way our politicians are behaving, only makes it more difficult and less likely.
Politicians do a tough job on our behalf and it is important that we have a robust democracy.
But civility is important too, and let’s hope there is more of that in our Parliament in the future.
RISKY MOVE: ACT party leader David Seymour. ACT tried to get Parliament to pass a motion that China is engaged in genocide, which Steve WynHarris believes could potentially damage trade relations with NZ.
Sheep and beef changes vast
CHANGING: Keith Woodford says sheep and beef farming has changed enormously over the last 50 years.
The Braided Trail
Keith Woodford
I DECIDED recently that it was time to take a closer look at what is happening on sheep and beef farms.
The underlying motive is that I have been giving thought as to what the sheep and beef industry, which contributes around $7 billion of export income each year, might look like in another 10 or 20 years.
But before getting too immersed in that future, I needed to make sure I understood the present and how we got to where we are now.
When I left school a very long time ago, I had in mind that I wanted to be a sheep farmer myself.
As a school boy, I used to peruse the advertisements each weekend in Saturday’s newspaper and figure out what a farm for 1000 ewes plus young stock and a few beef cows would cost.
The land cost was around 20,000 New Zealand pounds, with this converting subsequently in 1967 to around $40,000.
The figure now is about 30 times that, perhaps more, before taking into account that 1000 ewes would no longer be anywhere near enough for a living.
For a range of reasons, I never became a sheep farmer. Other passions such as mountaineering together with economic realities meant that it did not happen.
But I did work on sheep farms in various parts of the country. Then, when I left university and joined the Ministry of Agriculture, I also worked with sheep farmers for a while before heading in other directions.
Although I still find myself often visiting sheep farms and also sometimes getting drawn into research projects, in the main it has been as an outsider looking in.
One thing I know for sure is that sheep and beef farming has changed enormously over the last 50 years.
I decided the place to start some research for this article was to go to the Beef + Lamb (BLNZ) website. If it’s data that you want, then there is a veritable trove of it to be found there. It’s just that some of it takes some finding.
It was about 1982 that sheep numbers in New Zealand reached a peak of around 70 million, linked to a poorly structured livestock-incentive scheme.
By 1990, numbers were back to 57 million and now they are down to about 27 million.
However, the sheep that remain are a great deal more productive than those of former times.
Carcase weights have increased from around 12 kg to more than 18 kg. Lambing percentages, which by 1990 were still only nudging 100%, have regularly exceeded 125% in recent years.
Back in the 1970s, 1980s and even later, beef cattle were run not because they were particularly profitable, but because they were needed both for management of pastures and managing the health of the sheep. The cattle would hoover up the rough grass and also help to break the life-cycle of intestinal worms.
In those days, the beef industry was based on specialist beef breeds. This meant most farmers who considered themselves sheep farmers also had a herd of beef cows. Ideas of crossbreeding a beef sire over dairy cows, or farming Friesian bulls for hamburger meat, were still in their infancy. This was linked to the hamburger itself also being in relative infancy in world markets.
The other big change has been wool. Synthetics started to make a mark in the late 1960s and it has been downhill since in terms of market share of wool.
The only exception has been fine-wooled merinos, but merinos struggle with lack of health resilience outside of dry climates.
This year has to be the worst year ever for wool. BLNZ estimates for the current year are that on the average sheep farm, shearing costs exceed the gross value of the wool. Strong wool has indeed become a weed.
The good news of the last 20 years has been that both sheep meats and beef have risen considerably in value, albeit with fluctuations.
For a long time, New Zealand was highly dependent on Britain for lamb markets and the USA for beef, but the rise of China has changed all that.
The irony now is that it is China on which New Zealand is so dependent. This is particularly the case for ewe mutton.
Some of my old-time sheepfarmer mates can recall occasions back in the 1980s when the killing charges for old ewes exceeded the carcass value. Good quality ewes destined for the mutton chain now have a similar value to a lamb. That change is all about China.
The big increases in the value of lamb were early in this century. For the last 10 years, they have still been drifting up but more slowly, and also bouncing around.
On the cost side, insurances and rates in particular have been climbing inexorably in recent years, although lower interest rates have compensated.
The big issue is competing land uses. This is where things get complex. Conventional wisdom says that sheep have been squeezed out by dairy and forestry, but that is only part of the story.
According to BLNZ, between 1990-91 and 2017-18 the area of dairy increased by 935,000 ha, the area of forestry increased by 352 000 ha, and the area of horticulture increased by 39,000 ha.
These figures total around 1.3 million ha. However, the area in sheep and beef, once again according to BLNZ, declined by 4.1 million ha from 12.1 million ha to 8.0 million ha. What happened to the remaining 2.8 million hectares of land?
Well, we know that close to 500,000 ha has entered the conservation estate through the tenure review process. We also know that some land has reverted to scrub and that much of this will eventually self-revert to forest.
By my thinking, we still have some way to go before we get close to the total 4.1 million hectares supposedly lost from sheep and beef.
I suspect that somewhere along the journey there has been a reclassification within the pastoral land category to exclude rural land that was never in grazing but was always in some form of native vegetation, or had reverted long before 1990.
I think the BLNZ figure of around 8 million ha or perhaps a little less will be close to the correct figure of effective grazing land, but that the 12 million ha in 1990 was an over-estimate.
Another figure that can be confusing is that BLNZ says there are now approximately 9200 commercial sheep and beef farmers, declining from 19,600 in 1990.
But elsewhere in their Farm Facts Compendium they say that there are 23,000 sheep and beef farmers. Presumably many of these are considered lifestylers. I have yet to get clarification from BLNZ as to how they define a commercial farmer.
When I started writing this article, I thought I would within one article be able to tell the story of where the industry is currently and then move on to looking at the future. Yet so far, I have only scratched the surface of the current situation. BLNZ has eight major categories of sheep and beef farm defined largely by topography and climate, both of which greatly influence the specific systems. I foresee another article looking at some of those specifics before I can move on to pondering about the future. I will be back.
