Provincial pain

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 13, Issue 618, 28 December 1995, Page 8

Provincial pain

• As the recently-selected National party candidate for this electorate I feel that is appropriate I make some comment on the decision of the BNZ to withdraw from Raetihi. One of my reasons for entering the political arena is that I believe that provincial New Zealand is getting a raw deal in relation to tax funded services such as health and education, and I feel that this situation is likely to worsen under an MMP environment, where there will be a surplus of urban liberals and a deficit of genuine provincial representation. The issue of the BNZ withdrawal is not however related to tax funded services. Banks, perhaps more than any other sector of society base their decision on profit and loss. They are not in the business of providing social services. Their reasons for operating are based purely on commercial grounds. rfaving said all that it must be noted that the speed of their departure is extraordinarily brutal, their timing stinks, and there is no doubt that the local businesses will have difficulties as a result. I believe that their decision to pull out of Raetihi is directly related to the current plight of the sheep and cattle industries, and that was the other part of my reason for going into politics. That is a fight I have been involved in for the past few years. Sheep and beef farmers have not had a fair deal in recent years. They have been stripped of their spending power by virtue of the fact that they have had to bail out the processing companies and their legacy of debt, and this in turn means that they have less money to spend in their local towns. The fortunes of provincial towns such as Raetihi are directly related to the profitability of farming. When farming does well so do those towns. Like bees to honey, banks are attracted to the smell of money, get that smell back into the farming community and the banks will be queuing up to open up again. John McCarthy, National Party candidate, Taupo Electorate