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Federated Farmers water quality spokesperson Chris Allen says farmers are using a wide range of management techniques to reduce nitrate leaching in Canterbury.
Canterbury’s groundwater nitrate issue has been placed at the feet of the province’s farmers by environmental activists, but NADINE PORTER asks whether it s the farmers rather than the public that have been let down. It was 1994 when Chris Allen quit his long-term job as an Air New Zealand engineer and headed to Ashburton Forks in Mid Canterbury to become, of all things, a farmer. The farming climate he entered was fractured and bruised after the Labour government implemented tight monetary reforms to right an economy that had been bottomed out by former Prime Minister Rob Muldoon’s interventionist policies.
THE POLITICAL ENGINEERING required to transform social-democratic New Zealand into a global poster-child for the free-market was considerable. Most New Zealanders under 50 years of age have accepted a description of the process which is four-fifths propaganda and one-fifth half-truths. The late Bruce Jesson, one of this country’s most astute political writers, characterised the events of 1984-1990 as a “bureaucratic coup d’état”.
Jesson’s description was, however, very far from being the general understanding of “Rogernomics” at the time of its introduction. Most New Zealanders greeted the economic transformation unleashed by the Fourth Labour Government as a welcome liberation from “Muldoonism”. More than three decades after its fall, “Muldoonism” continues to be the preferred shorthand for all the evils David Lange and his Labour Government were obliged to confront.
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Treaty of Waitangi / Te Tiriti o Waitangi: ‘’Part of the founding colonial mythology of our nation state was the desire to create an egalitarian society,’’ says columnist Khylee Quince.
OPINION: Former Prime Minister Rob Muldoon once campaigned on the slogan promising “a fair go for the ordinary bloke”. Kiwis frequently exclaim things are “fair enough” when assessing the merits of a situation. “Fairness” is often held out as the core defining value of New Zealand culture, referenced across the political, social and cultural spectrum in our history and contemporary society. Claims to perceived unfairness are therefore commonly raised in our community – whether they be in relation to decisions about securing vouchers for managed isolation spots, to facing an underarm delivery in cricket, or entry schemes to competitive university programmes.