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Richard Dawkins, Federated Farmers
For the first time in a quarter of a century, Federated Farmers has something positive to say about the Labour Party’s climate change policy leading into a general election.
Farmers are welcoming Labour leader Chris Hipkins’ statement that his party will not campaign on taxing agricultural emissions.
However, they want Labour to categorically rule out any emissions tax on farmers as part of potential coalition negotiations.
If Labour does form a government after the election, it will need the support of the Greens, a party with a history of targeting farmers.
Federated Farmers is also backing Labour’s plans to tackle the incentives driving productive farmland into forestry, but it has serious questions about wider plans for the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).
“The Labour Party has campaigned on taxing farm emissions in some form in every election since 2003,” Federated Farmers climate spokesperson Richard Dawkins says.
“Credit where credit is due, they’ve clearly listened to farmers’ views, looked at the evidence, and been open to changing their position. That’s a significant policy shift.
“We now need Labour to go one step further and categorically rule out any emissions tax on farmers as part of potential coalition negotiations.”
Dawkins says the change hasn’t happened by chance.
“For the last three years we’ve hosted an annual two-day meeting with the Labour caucus to build their understanding of these kinds of issues,” he says.
“It should come as no surprise that climate policy, particularly issues around methane and forestry, have been a major focus of these meetings.
“We’ve also worked hard to get Labour leaders out on farm to see the impacts of whole-farm carbon forestry conversions with their own eyes.
“That work has clearly had an impact that’s now flowing through into Labour’s policy.”
Dawkins says Labour is right to recognise the current ETS settings can make planting exotic forests more attractive than producing food.
“It’s really encouraging to see Labour acknowledge the current settings can incentivise the loss of productive farmland to exotic forestry.
“We support Labour’s commitment to pause new forestry registrations, review forestry’s role in the ETS and develop rules to prevent whole-farm carbon forestry conversions.”
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