Full cabinet
OPINION: Legislation being drafted to bring back the controversial trade of live animal exports by sea is getting stuck in the cogs of Cabinet.
Communications and Digital Media Minister Clare Curran was scheduled to meet with Federated Farmers last week to discuss the rollout of rural broadband.
This follows Federated Farmers vice-president Andrew Hoggard saying that dealing with woeful rural-broadband coverage should not be delayed while the Government pursues the roll-out of 5G cellphone technology.
Spark and Vodafone have been reported as saying they are trialling 5G -- the next generation of digital communications.
“Meanwhile plenty of towns and the provincial hinterland are without broadband, and with patchy or non-existent mobile coverage,” Hoggard says.
However Curran told Dairy News she expects to say more about rural broadband and 5G projects over the coming months.
“Absolutely everyone should share in the benefits of new technology and we need to be improving rural access and pushing for the best technology available, and we are doing exactly that,” she says.
“The Government is prioritising rural communities as it recognises their contribution to our nation.”
She was to meet with the Feds last Thursday.
“The Rural Broadband Initiative 2 (RBI2) work is progressing in parallel with the 5G work; it’s not either-or and I want the pace of that work to increase as much as is possible.
Hoggard says when there is poor or no access to ultra-fast broadband and mobile, farming businesses and family life suffer.
NZPork has appointed Auckland-based Paul Bucknell as its new chair.
The Government claims to have delivered on its election promise to protect productive farmland from emissions trading scheme (ETS) but red meat farmers aren’t happy.
Foot and Mouth Disease outbreaks could have a detrimental impact on any country's rural sector, as seen in the United Kingdom's 2000 outbreak that saw the compulsory slaughter of over six million animals.
The Ministry for the Environment is joining as a national award sponsor in the Ballance Farm Environment Awards (BFEA from next year).
Kiwis are wasting less of their food than they were two years ago, and this has been enough to push New Zealand’s total household food waste bill lower, the 2025 Rabobank KiwiHarvest Food Waste survey has found.
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OPINION: Legislation being drafted to bring back the controversial trade of live animal exports by sea is getting stuck in the…