Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is giving up on meeting with Groundswell for now after the farming advocacy group refused to meet her with lobbyists present, demanding a one-on-one.
Groundswell, the group behind last year's 'Mother of all Protests' against "unworkable" farming regulations, earlier this week reissued its request to meet Ardern to discuss the impact of the Government's policies.
Last month Ardern confirmed she would meet with Groundswell protest leaders after previously declining their requests but Groundswell spokesperson Bryce McKenzie said the group opposed lobby groups Beef + Lamb and DairyNZ being present.
"The Prime Minister offered to let us sit in on her meeting with the very establishment organisations that have failed to represent farmers' concerns, ensuring they would be present to shield the PM from our criticisms of them and the Government," McKenzie said.
"We reiterated our request for a meeting without the failing establishment bodies, which was declined."
The Prime Minister has now confirmed to Newshub that she has no plans to meet with Groundswell in the near future.
"Groundswell was invited to attend a government and sector group meeting and declined," a spokesperson for the Prime Minister said on Friday.
"In response the Prime Minister let them know the invite remained open, that it was important to have a range of perspectives in the meeting, and that this would not preclude discussing difficult issues or the opportunity for their proposals to be heard.
"They did not attend the meeting, which went ahead and was constructive, with a range of views shared, and plenty of common ground.
"We are not considering alternative meeting opportunities at this time."
McKenzie told Newshub he has tried to set up a meeting with Climate Change Minister James Shaw.
"We've agreed to meet with James Shaw and he just needs to fulfil that. He's accepted that and said he will meet with us but he hasn't done that yet."
A spokesperson for Shaw told Newshub he's been advised the best time to meet with Groundswell will be once the exposure draft of the proposed National Environmental Standards for Indigenous Biodiversity has been released.
"That is expected a little later this year."
The proposed National Policy Statement on Indigenous Biodiversity (NPSIB) is a draft policy set by the Government to guide councils on how to protect nature in their regions.
The Resource Management Act requires that Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) are protected, regardless of whether they are on public or private land. But there has long been confusion about which areas are considered significant and there's no legal clarity on what 'protection' means.
The proposed NPSIB will standardise the criteria and policies that apply to SNAs.
Existing practices in or near SNAs will generally be able to continue. Existing grazing, tourism, or honey production for example can carry on. But these activities won't be able to intensify, and new activities won't be allowed to negatively affect SNAs.
What else is happening?
It's one of many areas of grievance for Groundswell, along with Three Waters reforms, the tax on gas-guzzling imported cars, freshwater regulations, and climate change policy.
In 2019, the Government decided to price agricultural emissions and asked the Interim Climate Change Committee to advise on how this could be done through the Emissions Trading Scheme.
But the agricultural sector didn't want the Government to determine this on their own. Sector leaders proposed that the Government work in partnership with the industry to achieve emissions reductions - a proposal called He Waka Eke Noa.
The industry has until 2025 to come up with a solution and the latest progress report shows over 60 percent of farmers know their emissions numbers and 21 percent have a plan to manage emissions.
Agriculture accounts for 91 percent of biogenic methane emissions and makes up 48 percent of New Zealand's total greenhouse gas emissions.
Greenpeace has criticised the arrangement, because a recent discussion document shows "initial modelling suggests these prices would lead to reductions in total agricultural emissions of less than 1% reduction" in methane and nitrogen below 2017 levels, at a cost of up to $430 million per annum.
The Government intends that any revenue raised would be invested back into the agricultural sector to support further emissions reductions.
"It's just another lot of bureaucratic bungling really, because it's so hard for farmers to actually know what to do. There's no clear guidance to say what farmers are going to have to do," McKenzie told Newshub.
"All that's happening is we're going to be taxed and we just need answers to how we can actually mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
"I'm quite sure farmers are prepared to do it but they just need to understand what they have to do rather than just get taxed as a penalty."
McKenzie said the technology isn't here yet and taxing farmers will prevent them from investing when it arrives.
"It'll probably happen quite rapidly. But it's not there yet and possibly because there hasn't been a real focus on it. Now there is a real focus, I think we're going to get there quite quickly.
"But the thing is, if farmers get taxed for the methane production, then they're not going to have the discretionary money to spend on the mitigating effects when the science is there to show us what to do, so it's a catch 22.
"The farmers will need that money to spend on it rather than pay the tax."
He said Farmers might be forced to cut back on livestock to meet the targets.
"Realistically, that could be the only option there is to meet those targets and that's why we're a bit reluctant about all this because that's going to cause food shortages, and of course once you get a food shortage, you're going to get a price increase.
"It concerns us that that's what would happen, especially when the Paris Agreement states that this should not affect food production."
Finance Minister Grant Robertson has given himself $6 billion in new spending for the upcoming Budget and a large chunk of that - $4.5 billion - is expected to go towards the Climate Emergency Response Fund, which will spend proceeds from the Emissions Trading Scheme on initiatives to combat climate challenges.
In the meantime, there are resources available for farmers to reduce their emissions, though Federated Farmers is pushing for more use of products like Bovaer, which goes in animal feed and is said to have the potential to cut methane emissions by up to 30 percent.
