Venue brings out farmer in Bill

By AUDREY YOUNG

Bill English made a plea to heartland National supporters in a Wairarapa woolshed yesterday to stick with the party that had represented them for decades.

National instinctively understood farmers, said the party leader, invoking images of his own early life on the Dipton farm in Southland.

"I've done it, dagged the lambs all day, done the lambing in the wet, come in and had to do the GST, paid too much for the next-door bit of land, started out on 17 per cent interest rates ... "

It was the closest Mr English has come to holding a public meeting during the campaign so far. It was safe enough territory to tease them empathetically.

"You know the prices are up and down. You always blame the meat companies, or the Government or somebody, or the weather. That's business and that's what we understand.

"And it makes no sense at all for people who are in the farming community to think that the Labour Party understands any of that.

"They simply don't understand the commitment and risks that are involved in running your business.

"They have lived off and fed off the best years you've ever had."

Mr English was well received by an audience of about 75, whose concerns ranged from keeping out "dirty" invading hordes from Indonesia to rolling out broadband technology for equable rural access to the internet.

Farmer John McFadzean, the lessee of the Glenside station where the meeting was held, said he was sympathetic to Sir Peter Elworthy's push for an extension of the moratorium on GM release in October next year.

Mr English said Sir Peter had not made the case that standing still would benefit everybody and not just organic farmers.

He hoped debate over GM would move away from "hysterical fundamentalism" over tomatoes with lips.

National's rural policy released yesterday is essentially a packaging of other policies with rural interest, most of which has already been released.

It includes removing legal aid for objections under the Resource Management Act, lower taxes, incentives to attract doctors to rural areas, competition in ACC and holding off ratifying the Kyoto agreement on climate change.

Labour also released its rural affairs policy, which included facilitating industry reform, helping local government to adopt the best practice in the administration of the Resource Management Act and ratifying the Kyoto agreement.

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