Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Young Farmer of the Year Emma Poole and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters all received The Country Awards. Political photos / Mark Mitchell
OPINION
The Country host Jamie Mackay takes a look back at the highs and lows of 2023 and dishes out his awards for those in politics, sports and of course, the rural sector.
It’s that time of the year again folks.
Everything you ever wanted to know about the economy, politics, farming and footy but were afraid to ask!
It’s a 12-month trip back in time as we purvey and survey the good, the bad and the ugly of 2023.
It’s The Country’s Annual Awards.
In 2022 it went to carbon farming, aka The Emperor’s New Clothes farming, for condemning near flat-to-rolling, high-producing pastoral land, much better suited to growing food, to forestry.
In 2023 the honour belongs to Cyclone Gabrielle, which ended up making 1988′s Bola look like a stroll in the park.
One year on, the threat from carbon farming has somewhat subsided (no pun intended) for the pastoral industry. I wish I could say the same for the likes of Gabrielle and Bola for all farming.
Climate change and climate extremes are upon us.
How we mitigate against, and more importantly, adapt to changes in the climate will determine the future for farmers in the world’s most carbon-efficient farming country.
Which leads me on to...
Someone must have known Cop28 was coming when the word hypocrisy was invented.
No one word summed up the climate change talkfest better. Global warming is caused by man increasingly burning fossil fuels.
Yes, ruminants emit methane, but there are no more bovine and ovine livestock on the planet now than there were in 1990.
Which leads me on to...
You guessed it guys - it’s a quinella for the Middle East, with a bunch of rich Saudi Sheiks spending their oft ill-gotten gains on the world’s best footballers and golfers.
Who cares about human rights when you’ve got Cristiano Ronaldo and Jon Rahm? If only they’d chuck some money at my Southland Stags.
Election year threw up plenty of candidates, but in reality, the winner had to come from one of three men.
Some would call them three wise men.
Others on the left would question their collective wisdom, even if one of them was old enough to perhaps have Biblical memories of the Baby Jesus in the manger.
Sometimes, on occasions, he even confuses himself with the said infant!
From the moment Jacinda announced her not-so-shocking resignation in January it was game on.
Chippy started with a hiss and roar but finished the election campaign doing his best impersonation of a rapidly deflating balloon. Besides, the economy was always going to do him in.
Midway through 2023, I thought it would be the consistently on-message David Seymour who would hold all the coalition cards when it came to negotiating with Christopher Luxon and the Nats.
But as anyone who’s followed politics since 1978 can tell you (when a dapper young Māori lawyer first strutted his way into Parliament), there’s no show without Punch. Or counterpunch.
Political cockroach or not, stand up Winston Raymond Peters. You are one of the great survivors. And arguably our greatest political character.
The honour in 2022 went to the agriculture’s Energizer Bunny, Wayne Langford, for his sterling work with food charity Meat the Need and for being 2IC for Federated Farmers.
He could quite fairly lay claim to the title again in 2023, having ascended the Feds’ presidential throne from Act Party poster boy Andrew Hoggard, not to mention another sterling stint for Meat the Need with The Big Feed rural telethon.
However, my Ag Person of the Year goes to a dynamic young woman in agriculture who well and truly smashed the grass ceiling in 2023.
Emma Poole is our first female Young Farmer of the Year, a hitherto male-dominated competition that has been going since 1969.
She hails from a ridiculously over-achieving family.
Proof of purchase is her older brother Tim Dangen, the 2022 Young Farmer of the Year.
If that’s not enough, her husband Chris Poole was runner-up to his brother-in-law Tim in 2022!
Emma is a Waikato dairy farmer, a veterinarian and a young mother to boot. How does she fit all that into her day?
She’s already a corporate rural poster girl and is without a doubt the bright future of New Zealand farming. The primary sector is in fine fettle with the likes of Emma, Tim and Chris leading the charge.
Last year’s choice of (Professor) Wayne Smith was greeted with almost universal acclaim, after giving a lifetime of service to New Zealand Rugby, culminating in the Black Ferns’ glorious and nail-biting winning run in the Women’s Rugby World Cup.
In an ironic sort of way, his former, and much-maligned coaching buddy, Ian Foster, came within a Jordie Barrett long-range penalty of following suit - even though I reckon New Zealand Rugby got the wrong guy to succeed Sir Steve Hansen in 2020.
Fozzie stared down his detractors, and there were plenty of us during his tenure, with sheer grit. He nearly got his last tango in Paris.
However, my New Zealander of the Year award goes to a man who was pipped at the post for Politician of the Year by Winston.
Christopher Luxon unhitched his Beehive trainer wheels and did what no other politician has done in my lifetime.
That is to be elected (as our 42nd Prime Minister) after only one term in Parliament. Not all of which was spent as Leader of the Opposition. He held that job for just under two years.
Even his political mentor John Key took two terms. Remarkable when you consider the apprenticeships the likes of Keith Holyoake, Norm Kirk, Rob Muldoon, Jim Bolger, Helen Clark and Bill English served.
Now it just remains to be seen if the Politician of the Year trumps the New Zealander of the Year.
Unfortunately, I suspect Trump is a word we’re going to hear a lot of in 2024.
Merry Christmas!
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