Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declines to meet Groundswell NZ representatives

Monday, 1 November 2021

Bryce McKenzie, left, and Laurie Paterson are the men behind Groundswell NZ, which is pushing back against government rules affecting farmers.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor will not meet with Groundswell NZ in Wellington on Tuesday.

The farmer protest group requested a meeting with the Prime Minister last week, but her office has replied on Monday saying she has “prior commitments already scheduled for tomorrow.’’

Groundswell NZ founder Bryce McKenzie says he’s ‘’disappointed, but not surprised’’ that the request for a meeting was declined.

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Bryce McKenzie and Laurie Paterson talk about the reasons Groundswell NZ was set up (first published July 2021).

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“They’ve declined to acknowledge the huge number of people that turned out to protest against their unworkable regulations in July, so it’s not surprising that they won’t meet with us.’’

The group hasn’t ruled out requesting another meeting, or requesting one via zoom.

“We’ll just get the Mother of All Protests out of the way first on November 21 and see what the mandate is from that,’’ McKenzie said.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has declined a meeting request with Groundswell NZ for a second time.

The email from the PM’s office says it ‘’proactively reached out to the office of Hon Damien O’Connor, but regrettably Minister O’Connor is also unavailable.’’

When asked how far in advance the PM’s commitments are scheduled, a spokesperson for the PM’s office said: “we do our best to respond in a timely manner to correspondence and sometimes this involves consulting with other offices which obviously takes time.

“The Prime Minister meets with farming leaders on as regular basis, in fact it is one of the standing appointments in her diary. The farming leaders she engages with are the representative groups of farmers and the ag industry – including Fed Farmers, Dairy NZ, Beef and Lamb.’’

It is the second time the group has been snubbed by the PM after having a request for a meeting declined in August.

ACT primary production spokesperson Mark Cameron said Groundswell represented a large group of New Zealanders who were doing it tough.

“It’s astonishing the Government can see how alienated a group of people feel and yet not care enough to even meet with them. It’s been four months since the protest, the Prime Minister could find the time if she wanted to.

“The organisers of the Groundswell Protest have raised legitimate concerns about the issues facing rural New Zealand.

Groundswell was founded by West Otago farmers McKenzie and Laurie Paterson in 2020 after they organised a tractor protest in Gore against the Government’s freshwater regulations, which they said were impractical to implement on farms.

Ardern has previously refused to release information she has about Groundswell NZ, and Stuff has now filed a complaint with the Office of the Ombudsman about Ardern’s decision to withhold the information.