Full Show | 18 October

What this episode covers

With our regular host Bryan Gibson away on a break, senior Farmers Weekly contributing journalist Richard Rennie talks to Mike Petersen, chair of the Tukituki Water Security Project. The project is one of 149 that has made the government's Fast-Track Project list. Previously known as the Ruataniwha dam project, the Tukituki project takes a slightly different tack, prioritising environmental river flow, then human water needs and then irrigation demand. Mike Petersen talks about why the project matters to the region's future economic development, and how soon it could become a reality.Federated Farmers meat and fibre chair Toby Williams is talking to Richard about the implications of the government's decision to loosen foreign investment regulations, and what it may mean for the primary sector. A recent survey placed New Zealand 38 out of 38 countries in terms of ease of foreign investment, something he sees as significantly throttling the country's ability to expand at both a processing level and farm level. He sees the loosening of the regulations also as a means of addressing the imbalance in foreign investment which has been encouraged to go into forestry, at the expense of pastoral farming.Richard also catches up with colleague Neal Wallace and discusses the unintended consequence of regulations imposed in Southland that now mean its 3000 farmers have to seek resource consent in order to continue farming. The consent relates to the livestock urine being defined as an "incidental diffuse discharge" requiring resource consent, after a Court of Appeal ruling confirmed the regulation. The fracas has Environment Minister Penny Simmonds stepping in, describing it as unworkable. Richard talks to Neal about how the tangle arose, and what implications it has for the rest of the country, and future law making.

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