I’m writing to update you on our campaign to quit the Paris Agreement, along with some promising developments in the banking sector and a reminder to encourage someone to stand for the council elections this year (or stand yourself).

NZ Highwaymen ticket giveaway

But first, the NZ Highwaymen have generously gifted Groundswell three double passes to any of their NZ shows. Email us to nominate a farmer who deserves a night out.

You can check out the Highwaymen and the details for their shows at https://nzhighwaymen.com/

Still no reason to stay in the Paris Agreement

In our campaign to quit the Paris Agreement, we thought there’d be some attempt from those who want to stick with it to speak up for the agreement itself.

Instead, there’s a kind of passive acceptance that it’s a bad deal for New Zealand, while the only resistance is offered by saying that we have to stay in this bad deal for our trade deals (which is also dead wrong).

It's a special weakness to know that Paris is a bad deal, as our politicians seem to accept, but refuse to do anything about it. They could renegotiate our Paris commitments or even talk to our trade partners about fixing our trade agreements.

That’s what we pay them for.

No one seems to mind that the EU is currently breaching their end of the trade agreement with us by increasing their fossil fuel subsidies.

Perhaps our politicians could stand up for New Zealand’s interests for once, instead of telling us why we need to put up with bad deals, and negotiate to let the EU’s breach slide in exchange for letting us out of the counterproductive Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement is already shaping up to be an issue at the next election and, with no real arguments to stay in it, we just need to keep building public awareness of just how bad Paris is, not matter what you think of climate change.

A quick recap on why we need to quit Paris

National still plans to bring in a Farming Tax by 2030 and, to meet the targets they set in the latest round of UN Climate Change Conference chest beating (that’s the Paris Agreement process), they’ll have to.

That Farming Tax would mean all the same disastrous consequences that Labour was planning. That’s higher food costs for everyone while hitting farmers and rural communities, all for higher global emissions as production heads offshore.

The Paris Agreement is a bad deal for New Zealand because it ignores how emissions-efficient we are. Our power grid is driven by renewable energy and our food production can compete on emissions even after transportation to our export markets.

It is true that there are ways that staying in Paris would be a hindrance to our prosperity, rather than a disaster. If we had politicians that could reliably resist the applause at international conferences, staying in Paris would just be a waste of time and money.

If Climate Change Minister Simon Watts had flown to the last climate change conference to announce that Labour’s targets were unrealistic and, there being no plan to reach them, he was cutting the targets down to what is actually in New Zealand’s interests, then we might have even backed him up. It would have been an incremental improvement, at least.

Alternatively, he could have pointed to the need to maintain food supply, which the Paris Agreement says in black and white. He could have proposed to cut only non-agricultural emissions, explain how agricultural emissions are a cycle, and get recognition of New Zealand’s contribution to lowering global emissions through our exports.

That all seems a bit beyond our current political class, however.

The real consequences of the Paris Agreement for New Zealand have ranged from Labour governments promising to impoverish New Zealand to National governments saying they have to honour those promises.

All that adds up to an urgent need to quit Paris to remove the pressure from our poor politicians that just can’t handle it.

Some promising signs on banks

Our Back Off Banks campaign last year successfully got the systemic problems with rural lending practices from banks up to a parliamentary inquiry that included banks pushing misguided emissions policies.

There are some big changes afoot at the Reserve Bank and there’s talk that the Government may no longer be tolerating the overly risk averse 200-year event approach that regulated lending costs up for banks (which means higher interest rates for borrowers).

It also looks like there could be a shift on the unfair extra costs the Reserve Bank was making banks deal with just for rural lending, over and above other kinds of lending. Fixing that alone could be worth tens of thousands of dollars on average per farm in lower interest rates but would mean more particularly for younger farmers and family farms trying to restructure their affairs as generations turn over.

For those like us that want to see family farming and our rural communities remain financially sustainable into the future, these are exactly the changes we would need to see.

But, while few others were talking up the problem with banks having emissions policies based on out of date science that they were pushing on farmers, we argued to have that included in the parliamentary inquiry.

Now the Commerce Commission have opened an investigation into this (potentially) cartel-like behaviour, we may get some progress on blocking the Net Zero Banking Alliance, a UN group aimed at getting banks to "align" their business activities.

It isn’t like banks are about to become friend to the farmer, but we’re getting closer to the plain old market-based commercial operations that’s all we’ve been asking for.

It’s still the case that making some noise and demanding action from politicians can get results.

Council elections coming up

Local and regional council elections are coming up this October.

While what happens in Parliament takes up most of the news, the decisions our local councils make have a huge impact.

Particularly on land use regulations like RMA Section 6 (Significant Natural Areas, Sites and Areas of Significance to Maori, etc.), who gets elected to councils are pivotal to whether our property rights are respected or not.

And that’s besides the rates hikes for unclear benefits all around the country. Taking Gore as an example, it’s a 24% rise compounding on top of last year’s 21.4% increase. Where is the money supposed to come from?

So, encourage someone you know to stand for council. So often, there just aren’t the alternatives for voters to choose against the status quo.

Those standing for election will also need volunteers, so if that’s more your speed, make sure you help those you’re encouraging to stand for election when there’s work that needs doing.

Thank you again for your support.

Kind regards,

Bryce, Laurie, Mel and the Team at Groundswell NZ

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