As NZ Trucking magazine notes, two industries that kept the wheels of the economy turning before, during and after Level 4 lockdown were agriculture and transportation – the former growing the food, the latter delivering it.
While the powers-that-be paid some lip-service to the contribution of both industries, as Trucking laments, they wasted no time hitting both with deeply unhelpful penalties after lockdown lifted – crazy, unworkable farming restrictions for farmers, revenue-gathering RUC increases for trucking.
“Remember us? We kept the supermarket windows from being smashed to pieces in the first lockdown,” writes Trucking. “We should start a club with the pastoral farmers. Our journeys of recent times seem remarkably parallel in trajectory.”
