October 16, 2025 • 7 mins
The Prime Minister on what his government’s methane reduction target means for Kiwi farmers. Plus, emissions targets, Winston Peters’ comments on Fonterra and Alliance, reforming local government and the RMA, and paying tribute to Jim Bolger.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So better than late. The Prime Minister has turned up.
That was excellent. She did a very excellent job kicking
off the show.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Got a great name.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Yeah, well you you she's got a tea do you
get people?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
We were just talking about that.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
We were just saying, like, if we go back several generations,
the posh ones got the tea in and the poor
ones didn't.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
So that's what happened. We reckon.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
We're just debating that. So but at some point we
all came from the same place.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
But so many people call you Chris Luxton.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
They call me worse names than that, Jamie. Let's be honest.
Let's be honest.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Now, Joe didn't It wasn't that forth coming on what
she thought of your new emissions target reductions.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
She's forid or against it?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Well, I don't think she's got well, she's she was
worried that she didn't actually get much consultation from you guys.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
But I want to give you spoke to them before.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Todd McLay a pat on the back, because these are
much more sensible and realistic times.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
We said where we do this At the election time,
we said we'd go back and revisit the science which
we need to do quite regularly in that we're putting
the check in and twenty forty as well, because the
science base keeps changing, and what we're not going to
do is have our farmers penalized on bad science. So yep,
there's lots of people with advice coming in at us
and we've come back to fourteen to twenty four percent,
and we've also said, look, we actually don't think we
(01:15):
need to introduce agricultural pricing or taxes from twenty thirty
onwards either. And the reason it's pretty simple is our
farmers are doing a great job adopting technology that's both
lowering emissions and improving productivity. So if you just think
about if you just took the lic breeding program, the
cool sheet program that's going on at the moment, all
of that is that genetics breeding program has actually got
huge benefit for us some terms of managing our agricultural mission.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
So I think we've got the balance right.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
So we're getting to ten percent by twenty thirty. As
that have done, dal, do you think.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
We're pretty much we're on track for it's real live
and we're going to give a real hot go. But
I mean that we've already made I think four percent
already out of that on the pathway to that ten
and twenty thirty. What we're talking about here is fourteen
to twenty four by twenty fifty. So we can certainly
nail that given the adoption technology that we see.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
What happens if we don't reach these emissions targets. All
we get is a slap over the risks with the
wet bus ticket.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well we don't.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
I mean the way we've looked at it is like
you've got things like methane vaccines, you've got bowlllesses, you've
got eco ponds, you've got the breeding program. We only
need one of those things to come off. And we've
got four hundred million dollars invested in that, in that
innovation with industry alongside government now and something called agri zero.
So to be honest to me, I'm really confident we're
going to deliver it. And the history of farming in
(02:31):
New Zealand you don't farm the same way you did
thirty years ago today and we owned thirty years time,
and our guys are good at adopting new technology, and
I think we can do both. I think we can
improve the efficiency productivity, profitability out of our farms and
at the same time, Laura emissions, science, science, common common sense.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Should politicians, namely Winston be meddling in the likes of
commercial decisions made by Fonterra and Alliance. He was on
the show yesterday barking, barking and angry about the fact
that Fonterra is going to divest itself from its consumer
brands and that the Alliance Group looks like it will
(03:13):
do a deal with an Irish company and effectively seed
control to them.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Can I be really honest? I reckon farmers are sick
of politicians telling them what to do. I reckon farmers.
It's their livelihood, it's their businesses. They're smart, don't know
what to do. I trust the farmers to work out
what they want to do about those issues.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Why don't you instant to be quiet?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Well, it is entitled to his views. I've got a
different view, you know, if you want to ask me
on my view on Fonterra. To be pretty clear, I
think the margins and a consumer goods business are infinitely
lower than the margins in a food service or an
ingredients business. The shift that you've seen Myles Harrel and
Fonterra do over the recent years and why it's even
more profitable. It is because they're going after higher margin products.
And say, what's around the world.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Is it hard to work in coalition with someone who's
so nationalistic in his approach? No, I even't want to
sell anything to anyone from overseas and he doesn't want.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Well, it's been pretty good on that, you know, foreign
buyer band stuff.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
You know, we didn't get what we wanted and get
what he wanted, but we've said, look, if you're going
to come and invest five million or ten million in
the country, you can buy a five million dollar or
more house. And I think Winston was very amenable to
that because it's about productive investment coming in. But look,
I mean we're in a mature MMP environment. You know,
go to the Netherlands, go to Germany, go to Austria.
They're all made up of four or five Finland, four
(04:24):
party coalition governments. Inevitably, people have their different ways of
views here and I would have a different view on
that Fonterra sale, but we actually asked secondary to the
conversation because frankly, farmers can make that call.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Now a couple to finish on. I heard this morning
you were talking about reforming local government through the RIMA,
and I think the latest round of local body elections
are a perfect example of the system is broken, isn't it.
We've got far too many, far too many small local
body authorities. We don't need them. It's duplication.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah. Look, I think there's two things going on.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
One is you've got layers of government here that just
in New Zealand, and that made so much bureaucracy between
central government, which I look after regional councils. You've seen
in Southland, you've seen he cans, you know, and then
you've got district councils. It's just way too much and
you've got a hell a lot of paperwork shuffling between
the system and not a lot of activity, and it's
slowing things up. So as we do the RM, maybe
(05:17):
we want to strip it right back to what it
necessarily must be about. And I just as a result,
one of the questions is going to be what's the
role of future future role for regional councils period. It's
a legitimately good question to ask, is there a role
given you could do things in a much simpler kind
of way.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
And a final word, sad news yesterday that will awoke
to the passing the passing of Jim Bolger a few
months ago. Wrong, we referred to mister James Bolger, but
of course he.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Was never knighted because it was a Republican. He was
a Republican. He refused to do it. He was a
staunch emigrants.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I've got a text from one of my former correspondents,
Don Carson, who said, you know, he saluted the last
great farmer politician. Grant McCullum would probably aren't you, but
Bulger the great helmsman.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
He was, yeah, in the tradition of Holy Oak and
others that had gone before him. But look, you know,
I got to know him a little bit when I
came into politics. I knew him a little bit before
I came. But he was always really good sort of
when I ran into him, either a different events or
phone calls, he would sort of give you advice and
history from his experience as well. But he loved people,
very passionate about politics. I was with him in a
(06:25):
bar and Wayke and I and he was turned eighty seven, and.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
You would have still he was still fairly luck.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
He was wanting to campaign, you know, and just love
the engagement with people, which was really special.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
But you know, in many.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Ways a leader who led through a very difficult time.
You know, we'd come out of the whole reset in
the late eighties, very messy time for New Zealand economy.
We're in a big recessionary time now.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
I had a big, big win in nineteen ninety then
you know I went through a tough period as they did,
the Mother of all budgets and a bit of resetting.
But he did the right decisions for the right reasons
at the right time and maybe not always appreciated in
the moment if you remember as press in the nineties,
but certainly with the passing of time you are well
received and a great lead of forty seven.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
All right, Christopher Luxon, thank you very much for your time.
Do you should I on gift Joe's gift to you though,
Joe Luxton sunscreen because if you take your hat.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Off ither day like this is what I do.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
I get the seventy plus on in morning and it
goes everywhere. It's a hell of a lot of real
estate to cover, as you know, but I will have
a lot. Let's just square, be clear, because about just
be clear, because yeah, anything Labor does they know under deliver.
So I'm just worried actually that it actually would be
a sunscreen that actually would have any sunscreen protection in it.
You know, what has it got in there that doesn't
(07:35):
It looks very They're saying it's SPF thirty. Come on, loing,
labor will be SPF minus thirty. Make it even worse.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
A good shot at labor, Christopher Luxe, and thank you
very much for your time.
So better than late. The Prime Minister has turned up.
That was excellent. She did a very excellent job kicking
off the show.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Got a great name.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Yeah, well you you she's got a tea do you
get people?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
We were just talking about that.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
We were just saying, like, if we go back several generations,
the posh ones got the tea in and the poor
ones didn't.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
So that's what happened. We reckon.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
We're just debating that. So but at some point we
all came from the same place.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
But so many people call you Chris Luxton.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
They call me worse names than that, Jamie. Let's be honest.
Let's be honest.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Now, Joe didn't It wasn't that forth coming on what
she thought of your new emissions target reductions.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
She's forid or against it?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Well, I don't think she's got well, she's she was
worried that she didn't actually get much consultation from you guys.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
But I want to give you spoke to them before.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Todd McLay a pat on the back, because these are
much more sensible and realistic times.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
We said where we do this At the election time,
we said we'd go back and revisit the science which
we need to do quite regularly in that we're putting
the check in and twenty forty as well, because the
science base keeps changing, and what we're not going to
do is have our farmers penalized on bad science. So yep,
there's lots of people with advice coming in at us
and we've come back to fourteen to twenty four percent,
and we've also said, look, we actually don't think we
(01:15):
need to introduce agricultural pricing or taxes from twenty thirty
onwards either. And the reason it's pretty simple is our
farmers are doing a great job adopting technology that's both
lowering emissions and improving productivity. So if you just think
about if you just took the lic breeding program, the
cool sheet program that's going on at the moment, all
of that is that genetics breeding program has actually got
huge benefit for us some terms of managing our agricultural mission.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
So I think we've got the balance right.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
So we're getting to ten percent by twenty thirty. As
that have done, dal, do you think.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
We're pretty much we're on track for it's real live
and we're going to give a real hot go. But
I mean that we've already made I think four percent
already out of that on the pathway to that ten
and twenty thirty. What we're talking about here is fourteen
to twenty four by twenty fifty. So we can certainly
nail that given the adoption technology that we see.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
What happens if we don't reach these emissions targets. All
we get is a slap over the risks with the
wet bus ticket.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well we don't.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
I mean the way we've looked at it is like
you've got things like methane vaccines, you've got bowlllesses, you've
got eco ponds, you've got the breeding program. We only
need one of those things to come off. And we've
got four hundred million dollars invested in that, in that
innovation with industry alongside government now and something called agri zero.
So to be honest to me, I'm really confident we're
going to deliver it. And the history of farming in
(02:31):
New Zealand you don't farm the same way you did
thirty years ago today and we owned thirty years time,
and our guys are good at adopting new technology, and
I think we can do both. I think we can
improve the efficiency productivity, profitability out of our farms and
at the same time, Laura emissions, science, science, common common sense.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Should politicians, namely Winston be meddling in the likes of
commercial decisions made by Fonterra and Alliance. He was on
the show yesterday barking, barking and angry about the fact
that Fonterra is going to divest itself from its consumer
brands and that the Alliance Group looks like it will
(03:13):
do a deal with an Irish company and effectively seed
control to them.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Can I be really honest? I reckon farmers are sick
of politicians telling them what to do. I reckon farmers.
It's their livelihood, it's their businesses. They're smart, don't know
what to do. I trust the farmers to work out
what they want to do about those issues.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Why don't you instant to be quiet?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Well, it is entitled to his views. I've got a
different view, you know, if you want to ask me
on my view on Fonterra. To be pretty clear, I
think the margins and a consumer goods business are infinitely
lower than the margins in a food service or an
ingredients business. The shift that you've seen Myles Harrel and
Fonterra do over the recent years and why it's even
more profitable. It is because they're going after higher margin products.
And say, what's around the world.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Is it hard to work in coalition with someone who's
so nationalistic in his approach? No, I even't want to
sell anything to anyone from overseas and he doesn't want.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Well, it's been pretty good on that, you know, foreign
buyer band stuff.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
You know, we didn't get what we wanted and get
what he wanted, but we've said, look, if you're going
to come and invest five million or ten million in
the country, you can buy a five million dollar or
more house. And I think Winston was very amenable to
that because it's about productive investment coming in. But look,
I mean we're in a mature MMP environment. You know,
go to the Netherlands, go to Germany, go to Austria.
They're all made up of four or five Finland, four
(04:24):
party coalition governments. Inevitably, people have their different ways of
views here and I would have a different view on
that Fonterra sale, but we actually asked secondary to the
conversation because frankly, farmers can make that call.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Now a couple to finish on. I heard this morning
you were talking about reforming local government through the RIMA,
and I think the latest round of local body elections
are a perfect example of the system is broken, isn't it.
We've got far too many, far too many small local
body authorities. We don't need them. It's duplication.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah. Look, I think there's two things going on.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
One is you've got layers of government here that just
in New Zealand, and that made so much bureaucracy between
central government, which I look after regional councils. You've seen
in Southland, you've seen he cans, you know, and then
you've got district councils. It's just way too much and
you've got a hell a lot of paperwork shuffling between
the system and not a lot of activity, and it's
slowing things up. So as we do the RM, maybe
(05:17):
we want to strip it right back to what it
necessarily must be about. And I just as a result,
one of the questions is going to be what's the
role of future future role for regional councils period. It's
a legitimately good question to ask, is there a role
given you could do things in a much simpler kind
of way.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
And a final word, sad news yesterday that will awoke
to the passing the passing of Jim Bolger a few
months ago. Wrong, we referred to mister James Bolger, but
of course he.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Was never knighted because it was a Republican. He was
a Republican. He refused to do it. He was a
staunch emigrants.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I've got a text from one of my former correspondents,
Don Carson, who said, you know, he saluted the last
great farmer politician. Grant McCullum would probably aren't you, but
Bulger the great helmsman.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
He was, yeah, in the tradition of Holy Oak and
others that had gone before him. But look, you know,
I got to know him a little bit when I
came into politics. I knew him a little bit before
I came. But he was always really good sort of
when I ran into him, either a different events or
phone calls, he would sort of give you advice and
history from his experience as well. But he loved people,
very passionate about politics. I was with him in a
(06:25):
bar and Wayke and I and he was turned eighty seven, and.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
You would have still he was still fairly luck.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
He was wanting to campaign, you know, and just love
the engagement with people, which was really special.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
But you know, in many.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Ways a leader who led through a very difficult time.
You know, we'd come out of the whole reset in
the late eighties, very messy time for New Zealand economy.
We're in a big recessionary time now.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
I had a big, big win in nineteen ninety then
you know I went through a tough period as they did,
the Mother of all budgets and a bit of resetting.
But he did the right decisions for the right reasons
at the right time and maybe not always appreciated in
the moment if you remember as press in the nineties,
but certainly with the passing of time you are well
received and a great lead of forty seven.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
All right, Christopher Luxon, thank you very much for your time.
Do you should I on gift Joe's gift to you though,
Joe Luxton sunscreen because if you take your hat.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Off ither day like this is what I do.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
I get the seventy plus on in morning and it
goes everywhere. It's a hell of a lot of real
estate to cover, as you know, but I will have
a lot. Let's just square, be clear, because about just
be clear, because yeah, anything Labor does they know under deliver.
So I'm just worried actually that it actually would be
a sunscreen that actually would have any sunscreen protection in it.
You know, what has it got in there that doesn't
(07:35):
It looks very They're saying it's SPF thirty. Come on, loing,
labor will be SPF minus thirty. Make it even worse.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
A good shot at labor, Christopher Luxe, and thank you
very much for your time.
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