Federated Farmers says the increased support for the National Party in the election has sent a clear message that the electorate does not want the sort of taxes that Labour and the Greens were proposing.
Dr William Rolleston Photo: Supplied
The federation's national president William Rolleston said farmers would be relieved that they were not going to be burdened with charges for water use, Labour's capital gains tax or the Greens' carbon tax.
"Farmers were a bit of a political football during the campaign, not just agriculture, but the environment as well. So I think that the election result does say that the rhetoric that was put forward by the Labour-Green side in terms of farmers weren't doing their bit, was not really accepted by the electorate and in our view doesn't actually reflect the reality of all the hard work that farmers have been doing."
Dr Rolleston said the election result also delivered a clear mandate for the Resource Management Act reforms that the National-led Government could not get through in its previous term.
"Because it is a first in first served type of act, each application gets looked at in isolation, rather than as an overall strategic planning tool and that can mean, as we've seen, that catchments can suddenly become over-allocated or the decisions that are made actually take us past the point where we want to get to."
