Last week that game reached new heights of absurdity with the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council issuing proceedings against the Hastings District Council.
What they’re actually doing is suing their own ratepayers, which won’t achieve anything except lining the pockets of lawyers.
The interesting point is that it’s not farmers who are now in the gun but the Hastings council over bore maintenance and siting.
That prompted New Zealand First to issue a media statement under the heading, apologies needed to farmers over Havelock North water.
I certainly agree but I’m not holding my breath.
NZ First leader Winston Peters added that ‘it now appears it was not farmers or farm animals as one party claimed without a shred of evidence and nor was it Te Mata Mushrooms.
Back in September we had the Greens, Fish and Game, Mike Joy and various other experts and academics using the contamination to slag farming while not wanting to let the facts get in the way of a good story.
They’re all strangely quiet now.
The real problem appears to have been mechanical. It wasn’t an agricultural problem but a mechanical one.
What irritates me most is the cacophony of anti-farming hysteria when there was absolutely no basis in fact.
Individuals and some politicians climbed into our industry to try to grab headlines.
At no time was there any thought of the damage to our international image they might be perpetuating.
We had Green MP Catherine Delahunty quoting a Dr Death saying if we didn’t address the push for agricultural intensification in this country we are going to see more outbreaks of this kind.
We had Auckland University’s Dr Woodward claiming that the (Government) inquiry needed to be broadened to consider not just the immediate causes but other factors putting NZ’s water supply system under stress. He went on to add that “the expansion of agriculture has been a particular issue”.
The expansion of agriculture had nothing to do with mechanical problems.
On August 20 a newspaper said cattle and other four legged animals might be behind the gastro outbreak, adding poultry manure may now be out of the frame.
Then Hawke’s Bay medical officer of health Dr Nick Jones said animal faeces might have caused the problem.
They might have been but not farmed animals. Cats, dogs, rats and mice all had the potential to pollute the water.
Environmental Science and Research then waded in saying testing suggested a ruminant source such as cattle, sheep or deer.
A newspaper then had a photo of a cow above the caption “cattle may be behind the gastro outbreak that has made thousands sick”.
No they weren’t and it was sloppy journalism laced with some headline grabbing.
Cattle weren’t the problem.
We then had Delahunty issuing a media statement claimint the National Government was wasting a chance to ensure Kiwis didn’t get sick from drinking water. She then added the enquiry ignored the impact of land use on water quality.
Land use had nothing to do with the quality of water in Havelock North.
She then issued another statement entitled Gastric outbreak inquiry avoiding the issue of land use, followed by Clean drinking water must come before irrigation schemes where, you guessed it, she slagged the Ruataniwha proposal.
The freneticism at Green Party HQ must have gone into overdrive as we then had their co-leader hitting the scrum.
Green’s James Shaw released a racy statement under the heading Havelock North outbreak raises big questions about land use and climate change.
It didn’t do either; it did raise questions about bore design and maintenance.
What irritates me about the Greens’ approach is that they had no idea of what caused the Havelock North problem but that didn’t stop them manipulating the story to suit their own political agendas.
Without a shred of evidence they reverted to their old mantra of slagging farmers.
They had no facts and used a process of aspersion and innuendo to build their own propaganda.
That they showed such contempt for rural and provincial New Zealand shows their true position.
They tried questioning both Nick Smith and the PM in Parliament and came off second best, which restored some of my sense of humour.
Well done but we’ve experts and academics who are in the same category as some politicians of ignoring the facts and slagging farmers.
The tragedy of 5000 people being made ill by what seemed to be a relatively simple problem to fix was made worse by bandwagon jumping and the rank exploitation of what was an extremely serious issue.
It was contemptible.
