Dean Jacqui: Crown Pastoral Land (Rent for Pastoral Leases) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Dean Jacqui: Crown Pastoral Land (Rent for Pastoral Leases) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:678;Page:1265] 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki) 
: 
 Labour has laid bare its attitude to high country farmers. It started earlier on in this debate on the Crown Pastoral Land (Rent for Pastoral Leases) Amendment Bill. In fact it started in the previous term of Parliament and the one before that under a Labour Government when the then Minister David Parker decided to punish high country farmers because he simply did not like them. In return they did not like him so that was a fair deal in my view. He simply did not like them so in order to please his then boss Helen Clark he decided he would rent them off the land. The excuse that he used at the time was that the sheep that happened to be grazing on the shores of Lake Wanaka or Lake Waitaki had a particularly splendid view as they were grazing away and therefore the farmers needed to pay for that with a huge increase in rent.  
But it was more than that. It was not just the fact that David Parker was trying to please his then boss—not that it did either of them any good—by ratcheting up the rents. He was also there to punish the high country farmers because as has been said time and time again in this debate and in previous debates Labour does not like farmers. Labour hates farmers but I will tell you what it hates even more than farmers: it hates high country farmers. Do you know how I know that for a fact? It is because Labour members describe them—and we heard it here yet again today—as the privileged few those high country farmers. Those of us who actually get down to the South Island and know what it is like in the high country know that that absolutely could not be further from the truth.  
These are the hard-working farmers of New Zealand who—what—80 90 100 years ago took over the land by way of a Crown pastoral lease because it was rabbit-ridden it was  
Hieracium 
-ridden and nobody wanted it. So what happened? The Crown of the day offered those high country leases to farmers because nobody else wanted them. What did those farmers do with that land? They improved it. Those farmers over successive generations have put their hearts and souls into the high country. What have they done? They have reduced the rabbit numbers and they have turned what was high country rubbish land into productive land for New Zealand to the extent where the merino clip is now world-renowned and we have high performing businesses in New Zealand like Icebreaker and Mihi Merino the products of which are in demand all around the world. So those “privileged few”—those were the words from the previous speaker I do not know the little redhead over there. Saying the “privileged few” says it all. Raymond Huo that well-known Labour list MP I think referred to high country farmers as the privileged few so the attitude is pretty widespread amongst Labour.  
As for David Parker’s contribution to the speeches a couple of weeks ago he said that where farmers could show genuine hardship in the rents that were to be set by the Labour Government they could go cap in hand to him. What a generous guy! The high country farmers if they could prove genuine hardship because of the unreasonable rents that he was putting on them could go cap in hand to him. What kind of a Government does that? The kind of Government I would suggest that is a Labour Government that hates farmers.