Tuesday, 04 August 2026 13:13

Levy Scrutiny

Written by The Hound

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OPINION: Mike Chapman, former chief executive of levy-funded HortNZ, has thrown out a challenge to farmers and growers to put their levy-funded industry organisations under the same scrutiny as fertiliser, electricity, labour and freight.

"A levy is still a cost of production," he says.

The Hound reckons Chapman is on the money here: scrutiny of the levy spend isn't what it used to be, especially with one rural publisher now in bed with DairyNZ, Beef+Lamb NZ and the Feds.

Chapman notes, we cannot move New Zealand closer to markets, create the scale of larger countries or match developing-country wage rates.

We can, however, influence the cost of our levy-funded industry organisations.

"That requires scrutiny of governance, overhead, duplicated services, separate offices, research, conferences and promotion," he says.

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