Tuesday, 14 March 2023 12:30

Tough meeting?

Written by The Hound

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OPINION: Your old mate reckons it could be a rather confronting AGM on March 30 for Beef+Lam when its board has to front an unprecedented number of farmer remits (9).

These all appear to be asking B+LNZ to stand up for farmers.

It will also be interesting to see if current chair Andrew Morrison is re-elected or knocked out by challenger Geoff Young.

One particular point of interest is that Remit 9 (asking for B+LNZ to advocate for sheep and beef farming in the first instance, instead of being wined and dined by dairy), was somehow "missed off" the agenda.

Apparently this remit will now be discussed by the board in their "own time".

A mate of yours truly suggests that perhaps farmer accusations of B+LNZ becoming 'more and more like a socialist government department every day' aren't so outlandish after all?

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Civil Circus!

OPINION: It really is getting harder to lampoon government bureaucrats when they do such a good job of it themselves.

Anyone in the primary sector will know about the clowns covering the countryside in the red tape we all have to wade through.

Spare a thought then for media outfit Stuff who were threatened with fines up to $200,000 by a snivelling civil servant from the MoH for illustrating a quiz question with a photo of part of the cover of a 45-year-old copy Playboy.

As Stuff notes, “It wasn’t the Playboy cover which caused offence. No, it was the back page which… featured an advert for a cigarette brand”.

As Regulations Minister David Seymour notes, “The real scandal here is, well, no wonder we’ve got problems in healthcare when they’re doing the Stuff quiz during work time.”

Ewe Zealand First

OPINION: After all the criticism that Winston Peters leveled at the India/NZ FTA, it seemed just a trifle ironic to the Hound that the first NZ politician to visit India after Prime Minister Modi's visit was a member of the Ewe Zealand First party.

Wrong focus

OPINION: Your old mate reckons townie Brooke van Velden, the Minister of Workplace (or is it Woke Place) Relations is now showing how underemployed she is as a minister by initiating an investigation into whether young children should be banned from collecting eggs on farms and feeding animals.

Burn the village

OPINION: There's an infamous term coined by a US general during the Vietnam war, specifically in reference to the battle of Ben Tre: "We had to burn the village to save it."

Purist problem

OPINION: The sudden departure of Jim Ward, manager of Molesworth Station for 24 years, highlighted some major dysfunction in the way conservation estate is managed in this country - the biggest problem, as the Hound sees it, being idealogues who harp on about "taonga" and use all means possible to block sensible commercial operations on conservation land.

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