Rural News understands management and board members faced intense questioning on the issue at many of the recent round of meetings – not just those in the South Island.
"The tide, I can tell you, has changed," says Lindsay Blake following her area's meeting at Putaruru, Waikato – Fonterra chairman Henry van der Heyden's home turf. That's echoed by Bruce Hayes, Hikurangi, who attended the
Whangerei meeting.
"There appeared to be a substantial mood change by many shareholders [compared to] previous meetings I've attended on TAF. There's a simmering distrust of Fonterra, that we're not being given the full story here.
"The real concern now is how DIRA and TAF have been shackled together in the MAF [draft Regulatory Impact Statement] document on Fonterra's Milk Price Setting, Capital Restructure and Share Statement (DRIS)."
The Putaruru meeting, which the chairman attended, ran for three hours and was dominated by discussion on TAF's objectives and its consequences in light of that document, says Blake.
Some meetings were even more heated than Putaruru's, she has heard.
"I got a very angry call from a shareholder who went to the Te Awamutu meeting. Apparently they were calling for the board to stand down there."
The problem with pursuing TAF now, as Blake sees it, is the role it plays in what appears to be a Government plan to wield greater control over Fonterra, as outlined in MAF's DRIS document, and the likelihood it will pave the way to a share listing.
She says she sympathises with van der Heyden in that TAF was developed in a less hostile regulatory environment but is alarmed at his persistence to see it through now.
"There's a distrust of Fonterra in that MAF document that wasn't evident two years ago yet he's so focused on getting this through and hitting those deadlines before he retires [from the board in November]."
As a chartered accountant taking a career break to raise a family with her husband Grant on a farm, Blake says she got to grips with the implications of TAF herself and only recently got in touch with Leonie Guiney, a South Canterbury shareholder who has spoken publicly about concerns about TAF.
"I felt we needed to stop this parochial barrier and have an open conversation between the different areas. As soon as you start to scratch the surface of this you realise you're not a lone voice. Everybody has the same fear... we're having the wool pulled over our eyes.
"I love Fonterra and its ethos of 'all-for-one and one-for-all' which has benefitted our fathers and forefathers.
"What I cannot stomach is selling out my children's generation's right to that."
