Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor has paid tribute to the horticulture industry for its work over the past 18 months, which has been one of the toughest periods the sector has had to endure.
He thanked the industry for its work at Horticulture New Zealand’s annual conference at Mystery Creek, as it battled chronic worker shortages and adverse events.
The physical and mental wellbeing of growers had been put to the test over the past 18 months and he thanked growers who had supported others struggling at that time.
“That’s the way we will get through this,” O’Connor said.
He says there are 60,000 people working across the horticulture sector and labour shortages will continue to be a challenge; New Zealand was unique in that it has the highest reliance on migrant workers per head of population in the OECD.
“It does leave us exposed … in international events like covid. These events unfortunately are likely to occur in the future,” he said.
The recent announcement to allow workers from Tonga, Samoa and Vanuatu for quarantine-free travel will take some pressure off the labour shortages.
To critics who said it was too late, O’Connor says the world was still very much facing covid.
“Fiji has not been so lucky and any covid introduction into those islands will be devastating. We have been hard-nosed in ensuring there is proper protection for that two-way travel,” he said.
While the Government will continue to support growers needing RSE workers, he says it needed to think about making a longer-term worker transition so it was less reliant on these workers.
On trade, O’Connor says they are making progress in free trade agreements (FTAs) with the UK and EU. He hoped to have further news on the agreement by the end of this month.
“We always have high agreement on your behalf, but ultimately it is a negotiation. We have the advantage of the UK needing to reach out to the rest of the world to re-engage through formal trade agreements,” he said.
NZ was next in line for a trade agreement after Australia and had a different set of interests to that country.
“Let me reassure you that your interests have not been forgotten, put to one side or minimised in any way,” he said.
It was similar with the EU trade agreement, where the two parties are like-minded and share the same values.
This was particularly the case around climate change and they were determined to deal with people who are making efforts to reduce emissions.
“We can give them that assurance and that gives them some comfort,” he said.
Any agreement would not undermine the EU’s local producers or swamp its market with products.
“A trade agreement with the EU is one that will offer value for all of us and it’s not about competition. I’m sure we will get there,” he said.
On the Commerce Commission’s supermarket report, O’Connor said it had exposed a few realities and the Government was considering the report very carefully.
“For individual growers, it’s been impossible for them to speak up. I can assure individual growers that I will ensure your individual interests are upheld. Sponsorship doesn’t necessarily give you the right to suppression,” he said, in reference to supermarket chain Countdown being one of the main sponsors of the conference.
“We have healthy competition across our economy in all areas of supply and demand and the Commerce Commission’s role is to ensure that.”
