Govt has shown 'abysmal neglect’ of S.L farmers

Press, 29 December 1988, Page 3

Govt has shown 'abysmal neglect’ of S.L farmers

By NIGEL MALTHUS The Opposition’s spokesman on Trade and Industry, Mr Phillip Burdon, has attacked the Government’s failure to address the “very serious issue” of the South Island drought. Mr Burdon said that, at a time when irrigation schemes were being called for, and continuing cyclical droughts were being predicted, the Government had cancelled proposed irrigation schemes, and showed “abysmal neglect” of its scientific and educational commitments.

Irrigation proposals from North Cape to Bluff had been shelved simply because of the Treasury’s demand for a 10 per cent rate of economic return.

Previous governments had taken a flexible, pragmatic approach, but the 10 per cent cut-off was now being imposed in an arbitrary and uncompromising fashion, even when there was a social component, Mr Burdon said.

Irrigation was now very necessary for Canterbury, and schemes with even a five per cent return would have “massive” downstream benefits, said Mr Burdon. Mr Burdon said that Dr Neil Cherry, a Lincoln College meteorologist, was rightly drawing attention

to the climatic problems, but failed to comment on the Government’s neglect of the consequential effects. “The way it has totally neglected its responsibilities is doubly significant because of the economic changes and climatic distortions taking place,” he said.

Mr Burdon challenged Dr Cherry to resign from the Labour Party unless it adopted appropriate policies. Dr Cherry had been Mr Burden’s rival for the Fendalton seat at the last General Election. He also attacked the call from the Minister of Overseas Relations and Trade, Mr Moore, for more understanding from North Islanders about the drought, as “self-serving

grandstanding” that served no useful purpose. He challenged Mr Moore to “meet some of his rhetoric with action for once.” Mr Burdon was speaking from Geraldine yesterday, where he took a break from his Christmas holiday to address a public meeting. He said that Government spending on research and development had fallen over the last three years from 0.76 per cent to 0.66 per cent of G.D.P., dropping New Zealand to seventeenth out of 22 among the O.E.C.D. countries. The result was retrenchment with particular relevance to the drought, he said, such as the 23 redundancies in the Water and Soil Science Division of the D.S.I.R. They included a world expert on soil clays, and two scientists who had earned considerable money for the D.S.I.R. through contracts investigating dam leaks. The retrenchment in the soil science section would not help horticulturists switch to new crops, which was particularly relevant to Canterbury, facing its greatest change since European settlement, said Mr Burdon.

It was also “totally irresponsible” that the

Meteorological Service was having to cut staff 17 per cent. Commenting on Mr Burdon’s claims, Dr Philip Tonkin of the soil science department at Lincoln College said that it was factually correct that the Government had pulled out of irrigation scheme funding, but for complex reasons. Dr Tonkin said that the “easy” irrigation schemes had been built, while the less easy had been shelved for reasons such as cost, or the availability of better returns from other agricultural investment. Some older schemes were very inefficient users of water, and more efficient use had to be investigated, said Dr Tonkin. He warned however, that it was difficult to replace skilled people. The Ministry of Works, which had been the principal agency for irrigation scheme design in Canterbury, now had no irrigation engineers on its staff. Dr Tonkin said that of the engineering students who attended Lincoln College to major in Agricultural Engineering, most had specialised in irrigation a few years ago, but’ now none did, "because there are no jobs for them.” jf-