Farmers told to ‘roar from hills’

Press, 20 February 1986, Page 37

Farmers told to ‘roar from hills’

PA Dunedin The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bolger, has urged farmers in Otago to “roar from the hills” that they will not stand more pain from a Government that holds their industry in contempt. Farmers must fight if they wanted to save their industry from being totally destroyed by the Government’s economic policies, he said. Mr Bolger, the Opposition spokesman on agriculture, is touring drought areas. He told the Otago

provincial executive of Federated Farmers’ that farming had never fared worse. The Government was holding the rural community in “total contempt.” he said. “The challenge you face as producers is not only to produce what the market wants but to have the economic and financial structures in place that enable you to survive at the end of the day, after you have produced the market requirements,” he said. “What we are seeing

now is that last part of the equation totally missing. We do not have an economic structure that enables you to use your productive skills to market to the best advantage and then survive economically at the end of the day. “You will not succeed, you will not sell your message, if this Government can isolate you off into a small segment which it can ignore and push to one side,” he said. Farmers were crucified by high inflation, robbed by the interest rate struc-

ture, brutally battered by a wage-fixing system that did not work, and finally they had a currency that floated without let or hinderance irrespective of the damage it did to the productive sector of New Zealand. “I want you and colleagues like you across New Zealand to get together with other producers, and to have a stronger, more cohesive and more powerful voice in the corridors of the decision-makers,” Mr Bolger advised.