Taranaki born and bred, Shane Ardern entered Parliament in 1998 at a by-election in the Taranaki-King Country after former Prime Minister Jim Bolger resigned to become New Zealand’s ambassador in Washington.
He had been Bolger’s electorate chairman.
About 15 National Party candidates expressed interest in the true-blue National seat. Their numbers were cut to five in the party’s pre-selection process. They included Chester Borrows, now the Minister for Courts, and Roger Maxwell, a former MP for Taranaki and Immigration Minister.
But as he tells it, the “unknown Taranaki cow cockie called Shane Ardern” won the nomination.
His main opponent at the by-election was the ACT Party’s Owen Jennings, a former Federated Farmers president. The fledgling ACT Party was determined to win the seat. Richard Prebble, its leader, was a hardened campaigner.
Mark Sainsbury, then a reporter with the Holmes programme, was touring the electorate in his white Jaguar and stopped Ardern in Otorohanga the day after he had been nominated. Prebble had told Sainsbury “you could put up a drover’s dog in this seat and the Nats would select it”.
Ardern rejoined: “Well, my knowledge of drovers’ dogs is that they are hard-working and honest, unlike the urban rottweiler who made that comment.” The remark was broadcast.
Prebble later met Ardern in Wellington, congratulated him on the remark and took him under his wing. “We had a good relationship.”
Ardern spent about 12 of his 16 years in Parliament on the Primary Production Select Committee and chaired it for six years. He also sat on two special select committees set up to consider legislation to establish Fonterra.
The first bill, prepared under the Shipley Government before its defeat at the 1999 general election, was drafted to deregulate the Dairy Board and establish what then was called Global Co or Mega Co.
The two major industry co-operatives then were the NZ Dairy Group and Kiwi Co-operative Dairies. The reform proposals didn’t get the 75% support needed from shareholders. A fresh legislative attempt at sector restructuring under the Clark Government did win industry support and Fonterra was established in 2001.
Ardern is better known as the MP who drove a tractor up the steps of the House of Representatives in protest against Labour’s “fart tax”. He acknowledged this was “the obvious next achievement for me – nowhere near as monumental but it got me much more publicity”.
The Clark Government was intent on imposing a tax on methane emissions from animals and overwhelmingly it had a parliamentary majority. The National caucus opposed it.
Shane Ardern – talk to the farmers.
At the time the tax was being promoted, Ardern said, the Labour Government had decided the continual investment in the old agricultural industries was poor investment. “This is a hardy annual,” he said. “It comes around every 10 years or so.”
Funding was being withdrawn from science organisations that were involved in ruminant science and some of the world’s best ruminant scientists were going overseas.
“So they were going to put a tax on farmers for methane emissions with the argument that that tax was then going to be invested in research to find a way around the amount of methane that was being emitted,” Ardern recalled.
“And running parallel with that they were sacking ruminant scientists who were doing the very research that would essentially bring that outcome.
“So I just opposed it on the ground it was an absolute outright lie.
“The end result – after a tractor went up the steps of Parliament and got on CNN and the BBC and various other things – was they didn’t go ahead with it. So I can claim having been a major part of a campaign that stopped a government from introducing a tax that was unfair and unjust on the sector that I represented.”
Many other MPs were involved in the campaign against the Labour policy, Ardern emphasised. “But certainly the tractor on the steps of Parliament and the publicity that came from that and the subsequent interviews and the ability to make them look stupid with the fart tax – it made Helen Clark change her mind.”
The Food Safety Bill went through the Primary Production Select Committee while he was chairman.
He regarded it as “absolutely vital to the dairy industry” because of the whey protein concentrate issue, and was pleased to see it passed.
‘I really do believe we could improve the lot of the meat and wool sector, both by a substantial margin, if we had the right marketing structure.’
The new Animal Welfare Bill was discussed by his committee but has been carried over to the next Parliament.
“We made some substantial amendments and recommendations to that as well,” he said.
“And actually this is the area of the greatest concern for me – we have a huge number of people who are huge enthusiasts about animal welfare but they don’t have a bloody clue what they are talking about and often they are as mad as it comes when it comes to their knowledge of what is good animal welfare and what isn’t.”
Ardern cited the furore over free-range hens versus other types of poultry farming.
His biggest disappointment as a politician flows from his support for Fonterra’s establishment.
“I regret we couldn’t bring about a similar reform in the meat and wool sector as we did in the dairy industry,” he said.
“I really do believe we could improve the lot of the meat and wool sector, both by a substantial margin, if we had the right marketing structure.”
It didn’t have to be an exact copy of the Fonterra model, so long as it achieved a focused international market.
The only way to compete for a small country far away from most of the major protein-buying markets was to have critical mass in the marketplace and product recognition or branding for which customers would pay premium prices.
Ardern said NZ lamb already had a reputation as the Rolls-Royce of preferred lamb cuts but it is sold for about half what the market would pay for it. He blamed a fragmented marketing structure that has Kiwi companies competing against each other “in a race to the bottom”.
Among the things he will miss is the cut and thrust of the caucus debate.
Ardern is often asked what difference an MP can make in caucus. The difference, he said, was that a caucus discussion could decide whether the Government should proceed on an issue – tractor safety, say, or animal welfare and environmental issues.
“There have been a few occasions when proposals arrived at caucus looking like a fait accompli and I’ve said ‘No, it’s not happening’, and it hasn’t happened,” he said.
“But you have to win your argument with research or some life experience background that you can bring to the fore and articulate in a way people understand and accept.”
Often an issue was not important to the wider community but it was important to the sector an MP came from.
“A good example is the docking of sheep,” Ardern said.
“On Lambton Quay or Queen Street most people wouldn’t know and don’t want to know but to sheep farmers trying to make a dollar out of meat or wool it’s hugely important.”
What will he miss least?
The 5am drive to the airport on icy Taranaki roads, for starters.
“I guess I am not going to miss the childishness of some of the public and therefore the media’s response to some things. I have never been able to get myself to a point where I endear myself to the type of people who are just interested in gossip or banter.”
‘Well, my knowledge of drovers’ dogs is that they are hard-working and honest, unlike the urban rottweiler who made that comment.’
And what will he do now?
He didn’t know.
“I’m going to have a couple of years’ sabbatical. Colleagues have said the bus will go by, you will soon be forgotten and you will lose your contacts and stuff. And it’s probably true.
“What I do know is I’ve got an ability to stir up dust when I have to.”
Fonterra formation
Shane Ardern doesn’t hesitate when asked what he regarded as his greatest accomplishment during his 16 years as Member of Parliament for Taranaki-King Country: “The standout one without a doubt was getting the caucus and Parliament across the line on the formation of Fonterra.”
Late in the 1990s the Government was headed down the path of deregulating all the producer boards. The boards weren’t asking for it. They were being told it was going to happen.
A strong weight of opinion had been built up against a mega-co-operative in the dairy industry and there was substantial opposition within the National caucus.
“You go back and look at the screeds of columns by commentators like Gareth Morgan, Tony Baldwin, Brian Gaynor, Bob Jones,” Ardern recalled.
“They all had a view and not one of them thought forming Fonterra was a good idea.
“Then you drill that into the normal dries in the caucus at the time – people like Max Bradford, John Luxton, Jenny Shipley. These were influential people in the caucus at that stage. Shipley was the prime minister. They were absolutely opposed to it.”
Ardern said he was often denigrated – lack of education or whatever the champions of deregulation could throw. But: “The long and the short of it is they lost and we won.”
Had Fonterra not been formed and the dairy sector ended up with the fractured industry it was going to end up with, he reflected, would the New Zealand economy be growing as well as it is now and would the country be doing as well?
“My conclusion to all of that, based on all the evidence I have seen, is overwhelmingly the answer is no.”
Ardern said he was often offside with party colleagues over the issue, including Gavin Herlihy, a former party spokesman on agriculture, and David Carter, Minister for Primary Industries for much of the Key Government’s 2008-2014 term.
“I don’t give a stuff whose toes were stepped on over that process or how much I ruffled a few feathers,” he said.
“What I can say to you, overwhelmingly and without a doubt, it was not career-enhancing for me in the National caucus. Under no circumstances did they want to see me succeed. Put it that way.”
Visit the farms
Shane Ardern said environmental issues were among those that most cried out for attention from the next government.
Whatever its colour, he advised that government to sit down with the agricultural sector, scientists, and industry leaders and visit farms to see what was happening.
He had been bombarded in Parliament by claims about dairying that went unchallenged by the media and the public.
“Certainly no urban environmentalist will ever challenge it because it doesn’t suit their argument,” he said.
“It really is hypocrisy in the sense that if you look at where most of the pollution is, it’s in our major urban areas and you are talking real pollution there, not nitrates.
“There’s a stream in the Hutt Valley [the Waiwhetu Stream] that actually caught fire. How bad does it have to be to have a waterway that catches fire?
“We might have a bit of methane floating around but I don’t think we’ve ever had one of the streams in our farming areas catch fire.
“Can you see what a hypocrisy that is for a dairy farmer like me? You are sitting in Parliament day after day, listening to Russel Norman saying you are a vandal and a polluter of the environment and you know how many Sundays you have spent planting habitat and native forage and the amount of fencing you have put in – and you have to endure that nonsense.”
Ardern similarly is rankled by Norman and others who talk of bulk milk powder as a commodity.
“Some of that powder is a more sophisticated product than any electronic component, if you like, given the specialist attention given to meeting the specification.
“Some is not food and a food ingredient. It is high-spec medicine almost.”
The real answer to the environmental dilemma, Ardern said, was to get a better return for the products produced on meat and wool land rather than criticising an industry that can get a better return.
