Parton has been the public face of the rural contracting industry over that time, as it dealt with transport legislation changes and the worker shortages brought about by the border closures caused by covid-19.
And says he won’t miss the stress of worrying how the industry will solve its labour shortage issues. But he will miss the people.
“They’re bloody good people and the conference we’re at now is more like a family reunion,” Parton said.
He came to the RCNZ after 15 years as Charter Clubs Association chief executive. Prior to that, he spent 21 years working in the air force and six years at Barclays Bank.
“You take experiences and knowledge from each and take it onto the next (job),” he said.
Over the past 15 years the organisation has grown from 265 members to just over 600. It is now more representative of the contracting industry and has a much higher profile.
He is proud of the fact that RCNZ has increased that membership and is in a better financial position than when he came into the role.
It was getting direct approaches from government, industry and the media to comment on issues affecting contractors, whereas in the past, that contact had to be initiated by contractors.
“We are now seen as the voice of the rural contracting industry,” he said.
Farming has also changed immensely over the past 15 years, with tighter regulations, changing attitudes and new technologies. These changes have also indirectly affected the contracting industry because so much of its work takes place on farms.
One of the biggest changes for contractors took place in 2013, when there was an overhaul in the transport legislation, which made life easier and simpler for contractors.
He says the legislation affecting contractors had been a muddle prior to that.
RCNZ worked with the Government where contracting vehicles which travelled under 40km/h needed a class one licence to operate and vehicles travelling over that speed required that licence, as well as a wheels (WTR) endorsement.
He says it also meant these vehicle operators were not subject to logbook rules because they were still operating class one vehicles.
“It’s made life easier for so many contractors, farmers and others in the agricultural sector,” he said.
But the labour shortages over the past 12-18 months remained the industry’s biggest challenge.
“It’s ongoing and is still ongoing of course. My successor has his workload full,” he said.
He was sceptical of the Government’s plans for a policy resetting on immigration, fearing it will result in no real change.
“It worries me when I hear that because I think we’re going to end up with another report that says exactly the same thing. The simple fact of the matter is, we cannot get the people to operate the big machines in New Zealand for 12 months because the work is only there for four to five months,” he said.
The solution is allowing more overseas workers to be allowed to enter NZ.
RCNZ asked for 400 overseas workers to enter NZ this year and were allowed in 125 which, he says, was not enough.
“If we can get the 400-odd workers we need, each year that will take a lot of the pressure off. The Government wants us to train New Zealanders for New Zealand jobs first – we don’t have a problem with that – the question is finding the people who want to work and keeping them long enough to get them experienced,” he said.
Four to five months of work for a new operator gave them some expertise, but by then there was no work available because the season was over.
“The other issue that compounds this is that the majority of this work is in the rural sector and that people need to be living in the rural sector,” he said.
“Rural communities of New Zealand, despite what the Government will tell you, are being run down – the banks, post offices, health and transport services, all of those things are less available than they are in urban centres.”
People did not want to move there because of these reasons.
Parton believed people within the higher levels of government had failed to grasp the reasons behind the labour shortages.
“You hear what they say but it’s patently obvious that they don’t understand. They say they want to work for New Zealanders but when you can’t get New Zealanders to work – and we’re not the only industry in this position – what the hell do you do?” he asked.
Last season, some of RCNZ’s members were working enormous hours because of the labour shortage. There was lots of damage done to machinery driven by inexperienced drivers and experienced operators quit because of the stress.
“Fortunately, we didn’t have any fatalities, but by god we were lucky we didn’t,” he said.
The quick fix solution of bringing in overseas workers will have to continue as it tries to find ways to encourage more people to consider contracting as an industry.
“The simple fact is that we are unsure where we will ever be in a position where we will not be relying on overseas workers of some description,” he said.
New technology such as artificial intelligence and robotics would never replace a person behind the wheel of a machine for this generation and possibly the next one.
“All of this compounds into the fact that the Government is so dependent on agricultural recovery, yet they are kneecapping the people who help make it happen,” he said.
