Smoking out the enemies: Tim Groser. Pic: Stephen Parker

Announcing the expensive extension of exemptions for the agricultural sector under the emissions trading scheme, Tim Groser said today he expected to face flak from “uber-Greenies”.

Are these obsessives the same nefarious devils that he has identified as doing damage to New Zealand’s “100% Pure” brand?

Here’s Groser again, trade minister and minister responsible for international climate change negotiations – quite a portfolio combo, that – in the National Business Review ($ – via Homepaddock):

Our enemies, who are internal, will find one cow in one stream and feed it back to environmental activists in the developed world to be used to try to exclude New Zealand’s products and services in the ludicrous belief this will somehow help New Zealand.

The 100% pure brand was used to market the New Zealand tourism experience and it has been deliberately manipulated in this space, Mr Groser says.

At the Homepaddock blog, Ele Ludemann nods along with Groser, adding:

Internal saboteurs who use isolated examples of what are usually insignificant problems to paint a dirty picture do the country a disservice.

They do nothing to improve the environment and pose a very real danger to the economy on which we depend if we are to afford the even cleaner, greener environment to which most of us aspire.

Internal enemies? Internal saboteurs? Sounds serious.

I confess that in the absences of examples, I’m not sure precisely whom is being referred to here, but as I’ve (traitorously?) observed before – here, here and here – the 100% Pure New Zealand campaign invites attention being paid to the country’s environmental record. It is not, or should not, be a vapid or frivolous collection of words. Real values are embedded in that slogan.

And any exhortation to New Zealanders to link arms and lock step in the national cause should be treated with the derision it deserves.

Scott Yorke puts it like this at his Imperator Fish blog:

If our clean green image is so important, why isn’t the government Groser is a part of doing more to protect it? Groser’s attack on environmentalists is a clumsy attempt to divert attention from the government’s failures.

Nobody living in a democracy should be talking about “internal enemies”, but if we must identify those responsible for the failure of our “100% Pure” brand, let’s start with the polluters, not those who are trying to improve the environment.

Quite.

But don’t listen to us. Listen to Martin Snedden, the eminently sensible former cricketer/lawyer/rugby world cup boss, who was recently appointed head of the Tourism Industry Association.

From an interview with Snedden in this morning’s NZ Herald:

Snedden said negative publicity overseas about New Zealand’s environmental record had dented faith in the 100% Pure strategy but he sensed that confidence was returning.

“I think it’s been through a cycle,” Snedden said.

“It was an incredibly successful campaign for a long time but the confidence in New Zealand started to erode when we questioned whether we are telling the truth,” he said.

“Over the last year it’s swung back to thinking, ‘Yes, that is right’.

“The campaign itself is right but what we have to do is to live up to that campaign.”