The Country 19/03/25: Karen Williams talks to Jamie Mackay

The new chief executive of Irrigation NZ (started Feb 24) has her feet under the desk, but has her move cost us a Country cornerstone?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Karen Williams joins us former vice president of Federated Farmers.
If she'd hung in there, she would have cut Wayne
Langfort off. At the past she would have been the
president formerly in a PR position with the FMG. These
days are Karen. For about a month, you're the new
chief executive of Irrigation New Zealand. And let's just address

(00:22):
the elephant in the room if we can. Why. I've
got a bit of a bone to pick with you,
because Rowena Duncan has been Duncan has been my offsider
here on the country since about twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen,
and I got used to her. She became part of
the furniture and she fills them when I'm away. But
she has now decided to take your old job at FMG,
even though she's going to hang around and help us out.

(00:43):
Thanks for that, Karen.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Good afternoon, Jamie. And you've look the congratulations to row
And I suppose perhaps I loved my job so much
at e FMG and might have promoted it a bit well,
but it obviously caught her eye. And look, we know
that she represents the role was very much about being
the voice of the client and understanding what the concerns

(01:06):
and challenges and opportunities are and Roy will continue to
bring that very strongly into FeMg. I guess the upside
is she's still in the wider egg family, Jamie.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Well, you women and agg are sort of just playing
musical chairs. Rowena yourself, Vanessa from Irrigation New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yep, just keep moving around and keep hopefully having a
positive impact.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
On Talk to me and I know you've only just
got your feet under the desk about the challenges and
they're exciting, well, the exciting things ahead for irrigation because
Vanessa winning, as I said, did a really good job
putting it on the map. And you've got Shane Jones
now a real champion for irrigation and water storage around
the country. And we were talking about a new water

(01:53):
storage facility in the Heratongua planes and Hawks Bay. We
just need more of this And that's your brief, that's
my brave.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yeah, and look shout out to Vanessa and it's great.
That's her insights that she had an irrigation New Zealand.
She's taken into NPI in sort of an enabling role
so that we're having these conversations about wise use of
water and good water storage and so that that message
won't change for us. You know, we're very much about Okay,

(02:23):
we know we've got some challenges with climate, and we've
got areas that are drier, areas that are wetter, and
then the anomalies that go with that as well. And
I think you know, we can talk about that certainly
this year where East Coast is usually your drier area
and your West coast is a bit more plentiful rain,
and we've got a complete reverse on that. So we

(02:45):
need to be thinking smarter about how do we harness
the opportunities of that water and those peak flow areas
and store that. And that can be in a different
range of ways, whether it is a dam, or it's
water storage on farm, whether it's canal, it's equi for recharge.
So we really need to be looking at the spectrum
of opportunities to build greater resilience for our farmers and

(03:06):
growers but also all of community.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
You're an arable farmer when you're at home, which is
probably not very often these days, Karen, in the ware
Rapper region, so you're looking for dry, settled, warm weather
at this time of the year to get all the
crops off. How's the wire apper looking.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, look, I think everyone be pretty happy and there's
plenty of grass around. Yeah, it has been a bit
stop starting with harvest, but the yields have been pretty good.
And I think that probably was that week period we
had that sort of ruined Christmas New Year, but it
has helped drive up the yields. It's just made harvest

(03:46):
somewhat later. We're probably three weeks behind where we'd ordinarily be.
But yeah, so we're taking each day as it comes.
It's raining again today, so it's a good data being
twenties for almost the twenties of the month tomorrow. Sohusband
at home sorting out those accounts.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
I think, are you going to be a legacy chief executive?
Like by the time you leave the role for your
inevitable next role. As you climb your way to the
top of the ladder, Karen Williams, will you get a
big kick our s dam and the wire wrapper and
say I built that.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
I'm not interested in titles. I'm just interested in good,
good outcomes, and we need to build greater resilience in
the waded up And it's been talked about for decades.
You know we've got mastered and district on restrictions this
summer where you will allowed to water your vegig adam.
You know that's no good when you've got a cost
of living crisis. So we need to continue the conversation

(04:38):
that's about how do we best catcher and store the
water so that we can use it at the right time,
and that includes residential and cludes are in industrial commercial
users and we certainly want to grow opportunities for our
farmers and growers.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Karen Williams, great to catch up with you in your
capacity as the new Chief Executive of Irrigation New Zealand.
Thanks for your time.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
Thanks very much, Jamie