Ex-National MP: Coup Attempt Could Cost Luxon the Election
I think it's going to greatly weaken National at the election. That's the view of a former senior National MP on the recent attempted coup against Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
"I spent more time explaining stuff around farming than actually debating stuff," recalls Cameron.
He believes MPs now have a better understanding of issues faced by farmers and rural communities. That's in part because of the leading role Cameron and other farmer MPs have played in relaying the voice and concerns of farmers.
In three months he steps down as an ACT MP. Health issues have forced the Ruawai dairy farmer to exit politics and go back to farming.
He recently bought a second farm - 200ha running 500 cows - a short distance from his home farm of 114ha milking 265 cows.
Cameron told Dairy News that he will leave Parliament satisfied that farmers' hopes and passion have been rekindled.
Cameron recalled an expression his grandfather had: if you allow bad things to happen, you become complicit in a bad outcome.
He learnt during his first three years that hope in farming had collapsed.
"It seemed like every time farmers went out the front door, someone was complaining about what they we were doing.
"Someone was telling them how to live their lives. And I asked myself, 'what farmer goes to the centre of Auckland and says, you can't do this, you can't do that?'
"We don't. Auckland, be there, we live our lives out in the country, and we bloody love it. So, leave us alone."
During his first term in Parliament, Cameron saw first-hand how Labour and the Greens took the rule book to farming.
He says morale among farmers collapsed the government wasn't listening.
"They just didn't believe in the same vision of rural New Zealand that we had."
He reminded politicians of the saying attributed to US President Dwight D. Eisenhower - "Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field."
"That's what it is - for us, it's hard work," says Cameron. "So, leave us the hell alone, because we're good at it."
In the current Parliament, the number of MPs from a farming background increased.
Cameron says rural people backed ACT and the party is backing them.
"I'm just a person. I've got a big heart. I haven't got much of a body left, but I've got a big heart.
"And I believe in what farmers are doing because they believe in what we're doing together."
ETS 'Blunder'
The inclusion of agriculture in an emissions trading scheme (ETS) has been a contentious issue for many farmers.
Cameron says the ACT Party has done everything to keep farmers out of any ETS.
He took a swipe at former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and former Climate Change Minister James Shaw for signing the country up to the Zero Carbon Act.
"We were the only party that voted against that.
"Because it's all very well being pious on the international stage, but at what cost?
"This is a dear little country, if you throw the baby out with the bathwater or give away the golden goose, and we're not minerally rich like Australia. Our wealth is in our farming."
Cameron says the current Parliament has delivered regulation relief for farmers on several fronts.
One was putting limitations on pine plantations, because carbon farming was running away and eating up rural New Zealand, he says.
And an issue dear to Cameron's heart has been reducing methane targets.
"We reduced the methane targets and I'm immensely proud of that.
"I don't think there should be any targets at all. Get rid of the whole bloody lot.
"You know you're taxing an animal for living, really. But apparently that's what the world wants to do. I think the whole thing is bollocks. Get rid of it."
National's Woes
Cameron is backing Prime Minister Christopher Luxon's stance on the latest National leadership vote.
Describing the leadership spill called by Luxon "very sad", he says politicians are there to serve the people.
"If we don't serve the people, we shouldn't be there.
"Now the fact that they've got all this in-house fighting does nothing for their brand.
"I hate to say the obvious, but mutineers get made to walk the plank."
Cameron praised Luxon for standing up for what is right.
"We get elected to serve the people, not each other."
