“For six years, Wellington ignored rural New Zealand. With ACT in Government, that’s now changed,” says ACT Rural Communities spokesman and farmer Mark Cameron.

“When rural New Zealand is free to flourish, all New Zealanders are better off. So this week, the ACT team will be at Fieldays hearing from the growers and innovators who get up at crack of dawn each day to keep our bellies full and our economy humming.

“Like many other farmers, I’ll be looking forward to announcements from my ACT colleagues David Seymour, Brooke van Velden, Nicole McKee, and Andrew Hoggard, who are all working to wind back the rural red tape that has proliferated under successive governments.

“With ACT in Government, we are:

• Replacing Labour’s freshwater regime
• Replacing the Resource Management Act with new laws centred on private property rights
• Making freshwater farm plans more cost-effective and pragmatic
• Bringing practicality to animal welfare codes
• Removing the rule for new Significant Natural Areas and dealing to existing ones
• Reversing speed limit reductions where it is safe to do so
• Reviewing the methane science and targets, and maintaining the split-gas approach
• Liberalising genetic engineering laws
• Reversing the ban on oil and gas exploration
• Reforming consumer finance laws to give faarmers better access to capital
• Rewriting the Arms Act and reviewing the Firearms Registry
• Enabling landowners to offset carbon sequestration against on-farm emissions
• Simplifying the Holidays Act and restoring practicality to health and safety
• …and of course, we scrapped the ute tax and repealed Three Waters.

“I’m confident that, come the end of the week, we'll have added to our list of wins for rural communities.

"Farmers don't tend to mince their words, so I'm looking forward to honest appraisals of the work we're doing to bring an authentically rural voice to Wellington."

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