Editorial: A Poor Policy
OPINION: At a time when farmers are advocating for less government spending and no new taxes, the dairy sector is rightly concerned by ACT's new immigration policy.
“The party that subjected Kiwis to a daily broadcast from the podium of truth through Covid owes it to farmers to tell them the plan for Foot-and-Mouth,” says Act’s primary industries spokesperson Mark Cameron.
“The primary sector is our economic powerhouse, it accounts for $52.2 billion in export revenue, 81.8% of our trade, 11.1% of GDP, and employs hundreds of thousands of people,” he says.
Cameron says an outbreak of FMD in New Zealand would cripple the nation.
“It would shut the export industry down for months, or even years. The livelihoods of many hard-working farmers would go up in smoke and our wider economy would take a hit that is estimated to be around $15 billion,” he says.
“As the risk of incursion increases, the Government needs to be ready to pull out all the stops, and farmers need to know what the plan is.”
Cameron says he has heard from farmers across New Zealand who say that FMD would be “the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“They’ve already piggybacked our economy through Covid, any incursion would do lasting damage to our prosperity that would take decades to recover from.
“As the disease is rampaging across many tourist hotspots, our biosecurity system is our sole line of defence. All practical measures need to be in place to provide reassurance to rural New Zealand.
“No one will begrudge biosecurity officials for conducting stricter scrutiny at the border, the stakes are too high not to.
“Getting this wrong, almost doesn’t bare thinking about.”
