ACT to cut red tape for everyday farming

Andrew Hoggard has announced ACT’s new policy to set initial national standards in the primary sector at the Rural Issues debate hosted by Beef + Lamb New Zealand, DairyNZ and Federated Farmers in Hamilton.

"ACT will issue initial national standards for core farming activities and methodologies for freshwater limits. This will make it easier and less costly for farmers to get on with the job, and give confidence about how freshwater limits will be set,” says ACT’s Agriculture spokesperson Andrew Hoggard.

“Freshwater management is front-of-mind for farmers. Labour’s 2020 freshwater policy statement was all pie in the sky. No limit that suggests a farming area like Tukituki should convert nearly 170,000 hectares of sheep and beef farms into exotic forestry is ever going to stick.

“ACT will prioritise a national standard for the methodology councils should use to set freshwater limits to give farmers confidence and certainty about how councils are setting them around the country.

“ACT has campaigned for decades to replace the Resource Management Act with a system based on property rights, and today it is officially law. The new Act is the foundation, and these standards provide red tape relief faster than the current timetable,” says ACT’s Infrastructure spokesperson Simon Court.

"The current consenting rules make it expensive and difficult to do routine jobs on farms. Something as simple as building a water pond or rotating a vegetable crop can cost tens of thousands for the consent alone."

“Federated Farmers outlined national standards that would make life easier for farmers and ACT agrees with them,” says Mr Hoggard.

“Making farming easier benefits everyone. Lower costs on the farm means lower costs for the food they produce. To grow the economy and ease the cost of living we should be constantly looking for examples to cut red tape that imposes costs.

"ACT will set national standards for ten everyday jobs on the farm: farm plans, vege growing, on-farm water storage, gravel extraction, drain maintenance, effluent management, fertiliser application, farm quarries, wetland restoration, and small and medium solar.

"These standards will set out clear rules and methodologies to shift the system away from over-reliance on consenting.

"The detail will be set in the standards themselves, developed with farmers, growers and councils and tailored to local conditions where catchments differ.

"This is another step in ACT’s campaign to make farming fun again. Party Vote ACT to lock Labour out and unlock New Zealand’s potential, so the next generation can look forward to a life on the land.”