Three keys to success of kiwifruit vote

These were consultation, the industry designing its own strategy, and industry people believing the working group got it right, he told Rural News.

The KISP project, as it is known, received well over 90% grower support for key proposals. These included retaining the single desk structure for Zespri and a regulatory change ensuring ownership was retained by active growers.

Richardson says you can never consult enough. Some people may say the strategy group didn’t consult enough but it had over 650 individual submissions, ran over 100 meetings, had innumerable other meetings with individuals and held three consultation rounds.

“The second thing was this was about the industry designing its own strategy for the future; it wasn’t someone else doing it for the industry or putting it on the industry.

“The people on the project were either voted on or appointed by their respective organisations so the representation and the nature of the project was that of an industry looking to its future rather than having government or any other party do it for it.”

The third key to success was people “genuinely felt that we got it about right,” says Richardson, who led the 18 months consultation before formulating the recommendations for voting. “There were lots of compromises, challenges, difficulties to face as reflected in the voting cap. Throughout the consultation process, through the use of good advice and through the quality of the thinking by the group itself, I think we about got it right. 

“Through those three things, the way we ran the process, who was involved and the quality of thinking, decisionmaking and referendum questions, we got the high turnout and that high turnout produced a very good result.” 

Richardson believes the voter turnout has only been exceeded on two occasions. One was the Fonterra set-up phase after a controversial and long process and secondly when the current kiwifruit industry was established in 1999.

“In terms of voter turnout we have achieved far in excess of anything other than those two situations and the typical turnout (for agricultural referendums) has been about 40% so we are far, far in excess of that.

“The other thing of note is, typically you might get 75-80% support for resolutions; all ours were in the 90s and as high as 97%.”

Richardson is confident of Government support for the regulatory changes required.

“The Government has seen a very robust process with a great deal of independence in the decisionmaking,” he says. “These are industry representatives but they went there to represent the industry, not just their own positions, so they left conflicts at the door. I think the Government saw a very good process; they saw a very clear strong industry turnout and they got a very clear message through the voting.”

Regulatory changes, changes to the Zespri and to New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers Inc constitutions will take 12-18 months.

“I think we’ve established a platform. Underpinning all this were the questions of the sovereignty of the industry, making its own decisions on behalf of shareholders, and who owns and who controls the industry.

“There is a very clear view that this is a global business, and it operates in a global market, but it is proudly, unreservedly and unashamedly going to be owned by New Zealand growers.

“That will mean not only the growing aspects, but right through the intellectual property all of those things happening offshore the benefits will come back to New Zealand.”