Disunity is death
OPINION: Staying with politics, with less than nine months to go before the general elections, there’s confusion in the Labour Party when it comes to working with the divided Maori Party.
OPINION: Your old mate was a little confused by Maori Party MP Rawiri Waititi’s stance over not wanting to wear a tie in Parliament’s debating chamber.
Waititi was booted out of Parliament on the first day back this month, after a dress code scuffle with Speaker Trevor Mallard.
As he was leaving the house, after being ejected by Mallard, Waititi said: “This is not about ties, it is about cultural identity.”
The Hound suggests Waititi may very well have had a valid point about the archaic rule around wearing neck ties in Parliament, which has now been relaxed.
However, he suggests if Maori Party co-leader is going to pull the old ‘cultural identity’ claim then he’d probably have more truck and ‘mana’ if he were not wearing his omnipresent, ridiculous-looking cowboy hat, which is hardly traditional Maori garb!
DairyNZ says Waikato farmers need certainty on Plan Change 1, but they say that certainty must be matched with practical, workable rules and a clear transition that doesn't get ahead of the new resource management system currently under review.
While the Government has moved quickly to make commercial hauliers' lot easier during the current fuel crisis, they appear to be stuck in the creep box when it comes to the agricultural industry.
Waikato farmers have been told that the Government’s new planning system legislation and the region’s Plan Change 1 (PC1) “won’t mesh together very well”.
Farmer owned co-operative Ravensdown has signed a two-year naming rights sponsorship of the Canterbury A&P Show.
OPINION: Confidence in the wool sector is rebounding as prices hit levels not seen in more than 15 years.
More than 300 growers, exporters, researchers, service providers and industry leaders will descend on Queenstown later this month for EXPO 2026, the annual conference for New Zealand’s apple and pear sector.

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