Launch of ACT’s No Fart Tax National Campaign
Speech by Hon Richard Prebble MP CBE
Wednesday 13 August 1 pm
Parliament Steps, Wellington
The ACT party is leading the parliamentary opposition to Labour’s proposed tax on flatulence.
Today ACT MP, Gerry Eckhoff, begins a three-week national tour to campaign against the unfair levy on farmers.
ACT is leading the campaign against the FART TAX because only ACT has the credibility on this issue.
ACT warned both old parties that Kyoto is a flawed treaty that will unfairly penalise New Zealand.
It is absurd that clean, green New Zealand is facing taxes on methane when India and China, that produce thousands of times New Zealand’s hothouse gases, are exempt. The USA, that produces one third of the world’s hothouse gases won’t sign, nor will Australia.
ACT urged Labour not to ratify. Now we find New Zealand the only country in the Southern Hemisphere to have signed.
None of our international competitors in the world beef markets have signed.
Last election ACT MPs predicted that Labour would introduce a flatulence tax – a charge that Pete Hodgson denied.
So ACT has credibility on this issue.
Let me make another prediction. The USA and Russia will never ratify Kyoto – so this tax is never going to be needed.
ACT’s Gerry Eckhoff is leading the campaign against the FART Tax.
He has the credibility to lead on rural issues.
Gerry Eckhoff is a very rare politician – a working farmer. There are no working farmers in Labour – or its allies United and the Greens.
ACT’s campaign bus is going to crisscross the country. Gerry Eckhoff is taking ACT’s campaign bus to 61 villages, towns and cities from now to 4 September.
ACT’s bus – with Gerry and other ACT MPs is going from Kaitaia to Gore, from Hokitika to Gisborne, and places in between like Darfield, Tutukaka, Inglewood and Wairoa.
On the 4th of September, together with Federated Farmers, Gerry is returning to parliament with farmers, their tractors and ACT’s petition against the tax.
Farmers are fed up. The FART TAX is the final straw.
Labour sees our farming industry just as a source of tax.
Labour talks about cutting red tape as the government puts on more and more red tape.
But my charge is more serious.
The Clark government is cynically using the rural landowners as a hate target. Labour is deliberately splitting the nation, setting city against country.
Labour is now trying to divert concern over the Maori claim to the foreshore into an attack on private rural landowners.
This FART TAX makes no sense. The administration costs will take much of the revenue. The tax has been put on so Labour politicians can, as they are doing, claim that farmers are to blame.
Well ACT points out that urban rubbish tips create methane and Labour politicians have been known to pass flatulence.
Farming is the economic backbone of the nation.
The government should be supporting farming not attacking it.
I predict that when Gerry Eckhoff returns on 4 September the whole country will be demanding – NO FART TAXES!