Fed Farmers president slams emissions scheme

John Key on Emissions Trading Scheme

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Prime Minister John Key has told farmers fuming over the Emissions Trading Scheme to "relax" and says the Government’s proposals are actually a good deal for agriculture.

Federated Farmers president Don Nicholson today launched a scathing attack on the ETS, calling the process "a shambles'' and claiming the Government was "obsessed'' with emissions.

At Federated Farmers' council meeting in Wellington, Nicholson said he had "had a gutsful'' of farmers being blamed for greenhouse gas emissions.

"Taxpayers are yet to wake up to the fact that the ETS is a three-letter word for tax,'' Nicholson said.

National has proposed to delay the entry of agriculture into the ETS until 2015, and shield farmers from some of its initial costs, but Nicholson said the ETS should be scrapped. "The mess, the shambles that we are in is totally unique. No other country in the world is as fixated with emissions as we are. It's obsessional.'' 

Key told farmers at the council meeting that they needed to realise that unless New Zealand had an ETS that included agriculture then international consumers would boycott their products.

The ETS would only cost the average farmer about $3000 a year by 2020 under latest estimates, Key said, which was less than the average farm would pay in ACC levies.  "I think you should be much more relaxed about that.

"On a relative basis this is not the big deal that you think. Ultimately you can be part of the solution, or part of the problem. But I think internationally your competitors will come after you, and it's my job to protect you from that.''

Nicholson told journalists that Key was trying to play a political game. "There's nothing unique in what he's told us - the same sort of story has been told to us for a long, long time. But guess what, we're the ones with the skin in the game.''

Key said later that he understood farmers' concerns but he believed they understood his message.

"I think they are realistic. Like any business they don't want cost increases and they see a sense of unfairness that New Zealand is having to tackle, through its ETS, agriculture while other parts of the world are not,'' Key said.

"I think the average farmer recognises that there is a sea change out there and that New Zealand needs to show it is taking this issue of environmental responsibility seriously.''

"I don't think, if you really look at it, that the average cost of $3000 on a farm in 2020 is going to cripple a farm.''

- © Fairfax NZ News