Mark Peart: Jim Anderton shrewd choice for agriculture

I broke a cardinal rule of journalism the other day. I made an assumption.

Never assume anything. It was drummed into me very early on in my career. It was good advice and in 99 times out of 100 I'll adhere to it slavishly.

But on this occasion I couldn't help myself. I was just a little too eager to get a march on the competition.

I assumed a week or two back that West Coast-Tasman MP Damien O'Connor was going to be promoted into Cabinet as Minister of Agriculture. I based that on Mr O'Connor's previous roles in the last Labour-led coalition as Associate Agriculture and Rural Affairs Minister. There was also the speculation, which turned out to be well-founded, that Jim Sutton wasn't going to be returned to Cabinet for the long-haul, apart from a limited tenure as Trade Minister.

But I hadn't banked on Jim Anderton forfeiting his economic, industry, and regional development fiefdom and taking on the agriculture, forestry and fisheries portfolios.

O'Connor indeed joined the Cabinet from outside it as expected, but his roles aren't primary sector-related.

I didn't know for sure who was going to get the agriculture portfolio. But I thought I'd try to pre-empt the Cabinet portfolio allocation process by taking a punt and filing an interview request the day before with O'Connor's office.

The next day came the polite suggestion that I might like to redirect my request to Anderton's office, as he was the new Minister of Agriculture. Never assume anything.

Prime Minister Helen Clark's selection of Anderton as Agriculture Minister was as shrewd as it was unexpected.

The farming lobby can't help but be impressed at the transfer of the portfolio to the third-ranked Cabinet minister.

Federated Farmers is promising to work "positively and constructively" with Anderton.

"Although Mr Anderton is from an urban electorate he knows the importance of farming to the economic development of New Zealand, and will advocate strongly for its best interests," national president Charlie Pedersen said.

Maybe so. But some in the agricultural sector worry it doesn't register strongly enough among politicians and the wider public.

AgResearch chairman Rick Christie recently stood as standard-bearer for that disenchantment in a speech to a conference at Grasslands.

"Apparently voters weren't voting on the basis of how a government might deal with industrial growth, international trade, science, research and technology - or this country's massive agricultural sector."

He went on: "You have to ask yourself: Does the electorate understand where the national wealth ... actually comes from?"

If the answer to that is no, Christie says, the question should then be: if not, why not?

Agriculture might not be as sexy as information technology and the film sector, areas the Government has promoted with great fanfare.

But the underlying gains New Zealand derives from the agricultural economy are too longstanding to be ignored by politicians or anyone else. It's what people overseas see first and foremost : an economy with solid foundations, thanks to the contribution of agriculture.

In any case, agriculture is slowly shedding its traditional and slightly stodgy public stereotype. Agricultural innovation is becoming more pronounced. Scientists in places like Dunedin are becoming more attuned to the commercial possibilities in the work they've painstakingly developed and refined in the lab.

Refreshingly, they're becoming more inclined to share their discoveries with the wider public. And that, hopefully, will mean that Joe or Jane Public have a much clearer idea of where the dollars they pay towards scientific research are being directed and what the tangible benefits of that investment might be.

That isn't to say that the agriculture sector doesn't have a long way to go in improving its public relations.

It's a two-way street.

But, as Rick Christie says, New Zealanders do need to be reminded of just how dependent our whole lifestyle still is on agribusiness. Maybe Anderton and his colleagues in the new coalition should take the lead in doing just that.

* Mark Peart is a Dunedin-based freelance writer.