OPINION: Water quality was one of the central issues of the general election.

Claims and counterclaims were made around pollution levels and culpability.

The Labour Party's proposed tax on the commercial use of water, designed to raise revenue for the cleanup of rivers and streams, was vigorously opposed by the farming community, yet supported by 70 per cent of the country as a whole.

Federated Farmers has been most vocal in defending the interests of its members. After nine years of a National-led Government, there is amusement value in the manner in which that organisation has sought to represent farmers as unloved victims. "Townies" are castigated for their prejudice, for their ignorance and for their envy.

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An opinion piece written back in January by NZ Farmer editor Jon Morgan is a case-in-point. If not quite dismissed out of hand, the science of pollution is seen as questionable because it causes criticism of rural practice.

Morgan laments the fact that an opinion piece by "an aquatic scientist" about "dying lakes and rivers" was "widely circulated". He complains that news about the "dirty Selwyn River" in North Canterbury has leaked to the media. He whines about the fact that a complaint about Greenpeace's anti-dairying advertisement was not upheld. The net result is that New Zealanders have given in to "anti-dairy vitriol".

Well, yes, facts tend to have consequences. Would it be preferable not to discuss the state of our waterways?

Emotively, we are told about how "upsetting" it has been for "dairying families" to face the music. Melodrama aside, the farming defence is twofold. Firstly, "dairy farmers are doing everything asked of them to reduce the loss of nutrients from their farms". Secondly, we are reminded of the economic benefits that have flowed from 150 years of polluting practice, "albeit escalated in the last 20 years". Farmers are the backbone of the nation. It is the price of a high standard of living.

The economy vs the environment argument is one that it is not easily resolved, except in as much as generally speaking there is much less tolerance today for an approach that puts progress and financial reward ahead of healthy ecosystems and a co-existence with nature. As the survey into the proposed water tax revealed, at least seven out of every 10 New Zealanders would agree to pay extra on consumer goods if it meant being able to swim in their rivers and lakes again.

The idea of a "high standard of living" involves much more than mortgage costs or the price of a carton of milk. Even Morgan concedes that farmers "want clean streams as much as any other New Zealanders".

Questions can surely be asked about who exactly benefits from concentrated dairy farming. Fonterra has been active of late putting placards up on rural properties, reminding us that they and their customers are on top of the effluent issue.

Propaganda always raises suspicion. While Fonterra chief executive Theo Spierings reaps the cash rewards of polluted waterways to the tune of $8.32 million does his personal wealth help the rest of us? I suspect what is actually trickling down, into the earth and the water table to contaminate for generations to come, is brown and comes out of a cow's backside. It's a distasteful and crude metaphor but we ignore its meaning at the collective peril.

Morgan's initial point, that the rural community is rising as one to challenges of cleaning up the environment, meeting their legal obligations and then some, is laughable. I don't mean to dismiss those agrarian folk genuinely concerned with these issues or those who have gone to exceptional lengths to be in compliance, merely to question their number. In both absolute and percentage terms, they are in a minority.

An August report by the Waikato Regional Council revealed that less than a quarter of Waikato dairy farms are meeting the required standard of effluent management. A mere 2 per cent were deemed to have a "high level of compliance", leaving 43 per cent "provisionally compliant", 24 per cent "partially compliant" and 9 per cent "significantly non-compliant".

However optimistically the regional council has looked to spin these figures, they speak for themselves. We might also question the council's resources when it comes to ongoing inspection of farms, especially when it comes to random, unannounced inspection, the type that is likely to reveal actual practice.

If the farmers guilty of polluting were fined accordingly, there would be no need for a water tax.