Agriculture still our pot of gold despite leftish dreams

FARMING SECTOR: The Whanganui electorate is all about primary production.

Around the Whanganui electorate - from Heads Rd, Wanganui, to Collingwood St, Eltham - meat is packed, cheese made, milk-powder bagged, pelts washed, grass mown, calves fed, stock sold and bought.

Trees grow, are felled, sawn, dressed and sold. We are the province of primary production.

Parliament is about to kick off again next week with the "Speech from the Throne" on Monday, followed by swearing-in on Tuesday and the first ordinary session on Wednesday.

As the new Deputy Speaker, I am kind of hoping Trevor Mallard and Winston Peters call in sick. The reflections on the campaign have been done and dusted, and the searching through the entrails has finally got to the boringly repetitive stage. What will be interesting, though, will be watching the review of the Labour/Greens would-be government and of their proposals for taxes and environmental policies.

In the course of the campaign, the left block proposed the imposition of five new taxes, which would have impacted heavily on the farming sector, such as carbon tax increases, higher personal and company taxes, capital gains taxes, and other charges and levies.

With the downturn in dairy auction prices on the world market from approaching $9 to less than $6, the Government's balance of payments and tax take will be well down. The troughs and peaks of pastoral farming have been with us forever, and recent increases in the prices of red meat and wool come after downturns which have been sustained and, in some cases, threatening.

But flatten out those troughs and peaks, and farming has been a consistent earner for NZ Inc for generations.

Dairying makes New Zealand $4 million per hour. The average price per kilo of milksolids over the past 20 years has been $4.20, and over the past 10 years $5.40.

That is money in the bank, which Labour and the Greens were very happy to spend with gay abandon. But that is money governments rightly used for projects and services - taxpayer-paid services - which we could not afford to provide free of charge without pastoral farming.

So I wonder what the Labour/Greens block will tell us is the answer now that their expected revenue stream, one they have consistently bagged and slagged, is in a trough rather than riding a wave. They will talk about the need for diversification in the economy so our revenue stream is not shackled to international prices for primary produce, and there is some merit in that, but they have yet to tell us what the green replacement for such a huge income provider might be.

The Russians closing their doors to European and American imports has flooded the market with those products we also want to sell internationally. There is a glut, and so our usual premium for high quality produce is eroded by the lure of cheaper competition from those prevented from exporting to Russia. One day that stand-off will be solved and prices for New Zealand exports will climb again. We will inch our way up the slope and enjoy seeing our economic environment climb out of the trough.

That may well coincide with the left block thinking of new and more exciting ways to spend taxpayers' dollars.