Shane Ardern National Rural Affairs Spokesperson

4 July 2003

National MP goes 'collecting' for farmers

Taranaki farmers have hit on a novel way to vent their anger at the Government's planned 'flatulence' tax and have called on National's Rural Affairs spokesman Shane Ardern to help.

An Eltham dairy farmer has given the Taranaki-King Country MP a 'tax' collection jar to take to Parliament.

"This flatulence tax is one of the more ridiculous proposals from this Government and it would be a joke if it wasn't such an insult to farmers," says Mr Ardern.

"Jim Sutton and Pete Hodgson have clearly read farmers wrong on this issue. They tried to fool the rural sector into believing farmers wouldn't foot the bill for the rushed decision to ratify Kyoto, and now they're dumping this tax on them.

"What's even more galling is that farmers are already contributing to greenhouse gas research through a dairy, meat and deer industry consortium set up to fund investigations into improving livestock production.

"It's not surprising they're furious. National would scrap this discriminatory tax which is yet another compliance burden to be heaped on agriculture," says Mr Ardern.

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