Resistance Kiwi has been reliably informed that New Zealand’s leading banking institutions are considering options to “de-bank” farmers who fail to comply with environmental targets.
At least one of New Zealand’s banks has emailed staff regarding plans to ‘off-board’ farmers not meeting environmental goals.
While the staff member who blew the whistle on this action is reluctant to come forward publicly because they don’t want to risk losing their job, we can reliably vouch for this person’s current employment.
As most Resistance Kiwis will know, our erstwhile Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern along with Green Party leader James Shaw and the Agriculture Minister, Labour’s Damien O’Connor, in December announced proposed farming restrictions that will cut our agriculture production by up to a quarter. (Ironically, they “sold” the policy to the public that the government wants to “protect future export growth”).
It’s unknown whether such targets would relate to government legislation or be set by the banks. Either way, we believe this would be a very dangerous path to be heading down when a citizen or organisation may be punished not only by the legal system for a perceived breach of a law, but also by their banking institution.
Maybe this is an example of how Big Government, Big Finance and Big Tech could collude with one another to shut down dissent so they can meet the human-crippling, utopian goals of unelected global institutions. Nah – that’s probably just a nutty conspiracy theory, right?
It does raise a number of important questions though.
- How would such a policy be implemented?
- Is this just a private sector, non-government institution’s attempt to solicit ideas from staff on how to incentivise farmers to meet environmental obligations?
- Who in the bank would determine if the allegations are actually true, and how would they do that?
- How would the bank know that a farmer wasn’t meeting environmental expectations or complying?
- Who would set the minimum environmental goals – the bank, the government or an environmental NGO?
- Who would be the arbiter of such claims and would there be a right of appeal and to what agency or organisation?
- Perhaps it merely relates to farmers who publicly oppose the government’s climate change ideology?
What would happen if activists decided to take action and picketed outside a farmer’s property over unsubstantiated allegations of environmental non-compliance and subsequently began promoting such allegations on social media and demanding the banks take action?
We urge bank staff who are aware of this development to contact us with copies of emails and letters so that we may alert the public and keep Kiwis informed on this disturbing development.
And we urge farmers to contact banks and ask them questions regarding any such plans. If you have any information, please contact us on resist@resistance.kiwi or leave a comment below.
