Talking about the tax will calm the nerves

“It is an election year, there are a lot of votes to be had out there in urban New Zealand and unfortunately water and farming impacts are a hot topic being used,” she told Dairy News.

The linkages between pollution and irrigation are clearly not there. The Ministry for the Environment report states that, she says.

“So what the supposed driver for this is becomes unclear if you actually go into the detail and have a good look. We are really concerned that this has been proposed and is potentially on the table.

“But at least [Labour if elected] have said they are going to talk to all the stakeholders and so on, so we will be there boots and all to have those discussions because as we all know the devil is in the detail.

“If it is going to be something we will all have to bear the cost of and live with, we need to know how that will work and present all these economic conversations on it so that it is workable and doesn’t destroy people’s incomes.”

The lack of detail is “absolutely” frustrating, Milne says. From day one when it was first announced she has talked about farmers being “petrified” because there is no detail yet.

“To get people to vote on something without a high level of detail, something so contentious and which could have such an impact for individuals, of course it’s scary for farmers,” she says.

But views of the land tax are nothing to do with being committed to clear water quality and swimmable rivers, Milne says.

“We want to go hard and fast for that – we all want that. It is such a no brainer,” she says.

“That is what [farmers] have been doing anyway with all the things we have been learning as we go and the progress on wetlands, planting, precision agriculture and all those things; it is all working towards that.

“I don’t think we have great language for that when we look at how a town person might look at it… someone who knows nothing about farming.

“We need those great stories from farmers to get out more…. We need to get pick-up in the wider community that we are making massive progress and are doing well.

“We know we can do more but we can nail this, and these amazing little projects going on in catchments all over NZ need to be championed and sung from the rooftops.

“Town people might even pick up some ideas on how they can do that in the cities and towns with water problems -- how they can implement similar ideas to get their end cleaned up too.”

We know this is all NZ’s problem, not just a rural problem, Milne says.

The response since the clean water pledge announcement from Milne and other farming sector leaders has been a “quite reasonable response”.

“It is broad ranging really, but most people are positive about it. A couple of people are not so positive because we haven’t talked about the urban thing, but this is about doing the bit we can do and we actually can’t do a lot about the urban one except give them tips and ideas about what worked.

“But we need to own part and deal with that and that keeps the public’s trust up too. We are not shying away and hiding from where we’ve got issues; but there are not issues everywhere.

“Unfortunately there is a perception that there are issues everywhere. Clearly we know -- because we live in our environment -- that there are not issues with water quality everywhere.”