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Apply for 2026 Nuffield NZ Farming Scholarship by 17 August 2025. More details...

Da kiwi bloke and da bureaucrat

Illston, Mark

Executive Summary

Farmer actions to reduce the effects of Bureaucracy and Bureaucrats on our lives. Farmers, business ‘persons’ and citizens appear to be confronted with more and more rules and regulations that are affecting the way in which we live our daily lives and operate our business activities. The word “appear” is difficult to quantify unless one of these new Rules and Regulations has a direct impact on your life. Rules and regulations are created by politicians and enforced by bureaucrats. In this presentation I will explain to you’ • What bureaucracy is • What causes bureaucracy • What we can do to reduce the effects on our lives • What can we do to reduce the number of rules and regulations. Farmers have not got a good relationship with the New Zealand voting public. There is becoming a wider gap of misunderstanding about farming and farmers. It is unfortunate that once most city families had a cousin on the farm now there is no common bond and the level of understanding is getting less year on year. If you can not spend the time to understand all of the Rules and regulations that are affecting your life and business then pay for and empower a person or organization to do the job on your behalf. We as farmers are going to have to take the initiative to attempt to breach the communication divide and give more young New Zealanders a taste of the enjoyment of country life. It will be very unlikely that many of them will want to stay and make a career of farming but to experience farm life is to have some understanding. Farmers the problem is in your hands, what are you going to do this week to make contact with the city folk and attempt to give some understanding to the wider community? It’s not their fault that they are wrong.

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