Recently the Government, with input from the Greens, proposed a piece of legislation called He Waka Eke Noa, which will penalise farmers financially for methane and other so-called ‘greenhouse' gas emissions. It will reduce farmers' ability to produce the very things which provide us with our precious foreign earnings. People say that because we are a small country at the bottom of the world we have no strategic value. But we do. We are an efficient producer of food. That is our strategic asset.

India has approximately 44,900,000 sacred cows, all burping, farting, emitting and making babies. It is a methane-producing production line. Yet India has been given a free pass and, along with the other BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) has been deemed by the United Nations to be exempt from the Paris Climate Accord to reduce greenhouse emissions.

Surely Labour and the Greens should bring pressure to bear on India to also bugger up its economy in the sacred name of climate change ideological purity? Emissions-reduction measures should apply to everybody, or apply to nobody. Is He Waka Eke Noa the thin end of the wedge of an anti-meat agenda?

Tony Wahren, Ohauiti.