Editor at large Shayne Currie is on a two-week road trip, to gauge the mood of the nation and meet everyday and notable Kiwis making a difference in their communities and wider world.
Jamie Mackay ditched the sheep drencher and picked up a radio microphone almost 30 years ago. He is, in every literal sense, the voice for the rural sector, the former “broken-down sheep farmer” who became a respected broadcaster.
He’s also a mood gauge.
“Well, my birthday was October the 13th … I was vastly more optimistic about life on October the 14th. That says it all.”
The election result that Saturday evening a little over two weeks ago has certainly boosted spirits in rural New Zealand, says Dunedin-based Mackay.
He was talking to Central Otago sheep and beef farmer and tourism entrepreneur Stu Duncan for his NZME radio show, The Country, on the Monday after the election.
“He went to the Wedderburn pub on the Sunday night. He said a huge pressure valve has been released in rural New Zealand, and I thought that kind of summed it up.
“There’s been a significant change in sentiment.”
Farmers won’t avoid emissions pricing under National, says Mackay.
“They’ve signed up to the Zero Carbon Act. They’re going to get there, but they’re going to get there in a more measured, fair and responsible way.”
Mackay says while there will always be “bad apples” in any industry, most farmers neither deny climate change nor the need for an equitable emissions pricing scheme, providing it’s fair, and accounts for all carbon sequestration on-farm.
“Generally, farmers are guardians of the environment.”
As well as a change of Government, the rural sector is delighted with a stronger representation of farmers in Parliament.
“This [previous] government was full of ideologues, if you ask me, who have very little practical application. Some of the stuff they tried to do was just absolutely ridiculous, like winter grazing regulations in Southland – [David] Parker was driving all that.
“It was almost anti-farming.”
It took Mackay back to his own stint as a sheep farmer in the 80s; he remembers Roger Douglas and David Lange describing farming as a sunset industry.
“We’re going to be like Ireland, we’re going to be a tiger economy, we’re going to be tech, blah, blah, blah…
“What Covid proved to us is that we’re more dependent on agriculture and farming than ever.
”I honestly think farming is underrated because tourism had [pre-Covid] taken over as the biggest export … or biggest income earner.
“But what people never factor into tourism is that it’s a two-way street. For every dollar that comes into the country, we export that same dollar when we all go overseas to Rugby World Cups and do our OE.
“Whereas with agriculture, the money’s all coming in.”
Mackay’s sphere of influence stretches far beyond his daily radio show.
This month he was in Hastings for the Hawke’s Bay A&P show and in Taupo for a golf fundraiser for Farmstrong, helping raise money for mental health support for farmers.
He is also the ambassador for the IHC’s Calf & Rural Scheme, which has raised an astounding $40 million plus for the charity since 1982. VW also have Mackay as an ambassador on their books.
“I think everybody, not only farmers and rural folk… we’ve got more mental health issues in this country now post Covid than we had before, obviously,” says Mackay.
“I’m very passionate about helping them to be perfectly honest.
Shayne Currie is travelling the country on the Herald’s Great New Zealand Road Trip. Read the full series here.
“There’s a lot of pressures out there - financial, social - even with younger people, with the likes of social media pressures that our generation never had to deal with.
“There’s just a never-ending demand, an insatiable hold on the health system for support and mental health.”
Slowly but surely, over the years, he’s seen farmers starting to open up about their struggles.
“A lot of my old mates are still sheep farmers. They would never have been any good about saying they were a bit depressed or down.
“They might moan to their mates in the pub but I think the next generation coming through are better at asking for help.
“To be honest, young people face far greater pressures than I think we did, or I did, 30 years ago.”
He checks himself. “Even though I went through Rogernomics as a young farmer… there were specific challenges to those days as well.”
He says he misses some parts of farming.
“I miss the romanticism of it; it’s a great job on a beautiful day.
“Like to be out tailing lambs – you call it docking in the North Island – or lambing sheep on a beautiful day or making hay or building a fence or ploughing a paddock.
“They’re all cool things. The beauty of doing those is you can look back and see exactly what you’ve done. Often in jobs like we’ve got in the media or when I was a lonely house husband for a couple of years, you finished the day, more or less at where you started and it’s like painting London Bridge – next day you were back to the start.”
In any case, he says, he’d be “too soft” to be a farmer now.
“Farmers have a seven-day-a-week mentality. Anyhow, I like my weekends to play golf.”
Mackay told Southland Tribune journalist Logan Savory earlier this year: “I haven’t done bad for a broken-down sheep farmer with a stutter; I’ve done okay”.
Follow Shayne Currie on his Great New Zealand Road Trip, driven by Volkswagen.
Working in media is never a chore, he says. He loves talking to people and has a deep fascination for politics.
He is out on the road a lot. “Southland’s near and dear to my own heart because I come from down there.
“I’ve got a wetland with the family duck pond on it, which is in the QEII National Trust. My most important piece of land is four hectares in the QEII National Trust, which means it’s protected in perpetuity.
“I’ve also got a share in a reasonably large-scale dairy operation.
“So, Southland is very near and dear to my heart. But I think I think my favourite part of the country is probably Central Otago. I just think it’s magic, you know, where you’re going to the Maniototo region through St Bathans.”
He sometimes misses the “simplicity” of country living; that spirit of community.
In the country, farmers would invite new neighbours to a welcome party, with drinks and food.
“When I first came to town, I invited all of our neighbours here in Dunedin to a barbecue. Some of them hadn’t even met each other.
“I’ve been in Dunedin for 14 years now and we’ve had some people move out and some new ones move in.
“I haven’t invited them for a barbecue,” he says before joking: “I’m turning into one of them [a city slicker] which is a bit of a shame!”
An ambitious project to rid Southland of pests has been put on hold amid financial issues.