Mark Peart: Dairy reform a huge legacy

As I was compiling stories last week about former Agriculture and Trade Minister Jim Sutton's imminent retirement from politics, one of the people I spoke to had an ironic take on his legacy.

I asked Fonterra's director of government, strategy, and trade, Phil Turner, for his thoughts. I was a little surprised when Turner ventured that he felt Sutton's outstanding achievement was in the agriculture portfolio, rather than in trade.

Turner said Sutton's stewardship of the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act 2001, which he drove in concert with Prime Minister Helen Clark, was a remarkable achievement, which paved the way for industry deregulation and the creation of Fonterra.

Turner remarked that this was a move which wasn't entirely welcomed by farmers or the industry at the time but it proved to be a prescient event.

Certainly, looking back, I can vividly recall covering the mega-merger, as it was then dubbed. You would be hard-pressed to find a process laced with more vested interests, questionable motives, enmity and vitriol than that.

Others in the past 10 years, such as the former BOP Fertiliser's battle with Ravensdown to take over SouthFert Co-op, the ultimately successful Rural Portfolio Investments takeover bid for the former Wrightson, and the protracted PPCS takeover of Richmond, spring to mind.

But the combination of the former Kiwi Co-operative Dairies and New Zealand Dairy Group was right up there with them.

Directors and senior executives of both companies viewed each other with barely disguised suspicion. More often than not, they had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the negotiating table.

Sutton's cool, calm, understated and professional approach was influential in the end in brokering an agreed value and framework for the new company.

During his last year in Cabinet, Sutton threatened to become the Zinedine Zidane of local politics as his deteriorating relationship with farmers over the later-aborted fart tax and private land access proposals become more acute. It spread to widespread dissatisfaction within Sutton's own Aoraki electorate as he paid the ultimate price for his unyielding loyalty to Clark over the controversial speeding motorcade incident, and copped flak for the Government's highly unpopular closure of rural schools in south Canterbury.

The hiding he took in Aoraki at the hands of National's Jo Goodhew resulted in his not seeking re-election to Cabinet when it became clear Clark and some of his colleagues would not support that.

What resulted was one of the longest political goodbyes in recent memory as Clark and Sutton negotiated what he freely admitted last week was his "soft landing": a roving trade ambassador's role and the chairmanship of state farming enterprise Landcorp.

The shadow-boxing included Sutton being offered, and declining for personal reasons, plum diplomatic posts in Canberra, Ottawa, and Washington.

Although there has an element of criticism that Sutton has been the beneficiary of "jobs for the boys" treatment, there is no denying the huge intellectual property he has invested in his widespread political networks around the world.

He has developed these over seven years as a Trade Minister and Clark and Labour would be foolish indeed not to continue to harness these in some ways.

So while Sutton might be the first victim of Clark's thirst to "rejuvenate" her caucus mid-term, history will look upon his legacy perhaps more kindly than another candidate for the chop might have otherwise experienced.

* Mark Peart is a Dunedin-based freelance writer.