Mark Patterson: Associate Minister of Agriculture on new government directive supporting the wool industry

The wool industry believes New Zealand will enjoy the benefits of the Government's new building directive.

From July, all new Crown agency builds costing more than nine-million-dollars, and refurbishments topping 100-thousand, must use New Zealand wool where possible.

It follows Kainga Ora reversing its price-based decision to not use more-expensive wool products in January.

Associate Minister of Agriculture, Mark Patterson told Andrew Dickens it does change the price, but you're getting a better-quality product. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Big win for the wall sector. The government's directing agencies
to use wolwere appropriate when building and refurbishing government buildings. Essentially,
the wall will be used for things like carpet, but
it will also be used for insulation. It's a wonderful fiber.
Associate Minister of Agriculture Mark Patterson is with me, and
good morning to your Mark.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Good morning Andrey.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
You're super keen for this. You're very happy.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yeah, very happy. And I mean the sheep farmers and
the wider wolf sector is really happy too. I mean,
this is a great opportunity for them. Now.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
The thing is, when we've had these debates, everyone goes, oh,
but wolf's so expensive, is it?

Speaker 2 (00:38):
No, No, it's not. You know, it's a value proposition.
I guess we're trading off maybe some price against a
little bit of quality in terms of the properties of
wolhares of the find natural fiber as you're saying, by degradable, etcetera.
So yeah, there's potentially a little bit of it, but

(01:00):
I mean there's some price stuff has built into this policy.
You know, they've got to account for that.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
So yeah, well this is going to benefit the industry
and that's going to keep them on good footing. But
the whole thing about wool and lamb, meat and sheep
in general is we need to get export dollars out
of them. So how do we do that.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Well, things are going a lot too bad at the moment,
and hopefully the current you know ruck it's over seas
with the tariffs and that doesn't impact that too much.
But I mean, we've seen a real upswing for our farmers,
sheep and b farmers as well as a dairy farmers,
so that's you know, that's been really positive. But we

(01:46):
need that to be ongoing. So we've got to get
behind wolves, one of those things where it's been so
large for so long that we've just got to get
behind that part of the industry to give a little
bit more diversification for hill country farmers. Otherwise we're just
going to turn the whole place in the pine trees.

(02:06):
So that's another elements of this policy.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yeah, get it, totally get it. It's a very good way.
In that interview, and I thank you so much for
your time today. The Associate Minister of Agriculture, mister Mark Patterson,
go the sheep. Remember the old days, you know, when
we had like ninety million sheep and two million people,
and everybody made sheep jokes overseas. What the numbers are
so low because the market has been so bad for
so long. For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge,

(02:32):
listen live to news Talks it'd be from five am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.