Editorial: Having a rural voice
OPINION: The past few weeks have been tough on farms across the North Island: floods and storms have caused damage and disruption to families and businesses.
It is important that farmers get out and vote for candidates who can better represent them. If we don’t it makes the job of Federated Farmers much harder.
The sad truth is the farming community is stuck with an old system of capital-based rateing versus the central government’s existing tax on earnings.
Comparable to other residents, farmers pay a lot of money to fund community services. It feels like we’re the ATM machines that keep councils’ lights on.
As Federated Farmers has argued for many years, land and capital value rates tend to allocate a larger portion of costs for council activities and services to owners of high-value properties.
High country farmers, for example, may own thousands of hectares, which leads to a higher valuation.
However, profitability is lower due to current commodity prices. Competition amongst buyers drives prices up, including overseas buyers after their next prestige asset.
People may be against overseas ownership, but by voting for a council which increases rates or forces excessive conditions upon on these farmers, their cashflows are eroded, making the properties unaffordable to own.
With all of this in mind I’ve put together tips for farmers and common sense advice for potential candidates.
Top tips for voters:
- Understand why your preferred candidate is standing and what they stand for; one-issue activists don’t make great team players.
- Even though some legislation is regulated at central government level, regional councillors have an important role to play in influencing the development and implementation of regional plans.
- Councillors have the freedom to advocate for innovative approaches to maintaining or improving the local community.
- Councillors should accept and recognise that farmers pay more than their fair share of rates.
Top tips for prospective councillors:
- Challenge your council to undertake a rating review with targeted rates and uniform charges.
- Implement hard caps on annual rates increases and focus on reducing and prioritising spending.
- Two-way informed communication is the key to meeting community expectations.
- Where changes in farming practises are required, give farmers realistic compliance timeframes.
- Improving water quality is a local community discussion. Spend upfront in getting the science right to identify the issues correctly and accurately. Put emotions aside.
- Develop policies and methods that are flexible to allow onfarm innovation and provide certainty for decisions and investments.
Remember, every vote counts. If you don’t exercise your right to vote, don’t complain about your rates and councils who don’t play ball.
