The Ardern government may have been stirred, but it wasn’t shaken, by the nationwide protest by farmers last Friday. And no matter how far the protest may have turned heads in the rest of the population, it leaves farmers no further advanced in persuading ministers to modify or revise the policies which their action targeted.
So if ministers won’t back down on their environmental reforms or their climate change policies, where can the farmers go? Parade through Wellington to Parliament? Mount a 24-hour vigil in Parliament Grounds?
So far there has been silence from the originators of the Groundswell and if there is a new sense of unity in the rural regions, it has yet to be channelled into the kind of pressure that automatically achieves change.
Farmers may be disenchanted with being told how to farm, but the evidence of climate change has been rammed home in the provinces in recent days hard enough to convince churlish sceptics of the need for urgent climate action. Continue reading “Grimes’ grouches with the effects of govt policies on Kiwis’ wellbeing may sting more than the Groundswell protest”