Phillip Neal wrote in a newsletter to members on March 15 that new taxes proposed last month go too far against farmers, Stuff reports.
“[The report] not only recommends a capital gains tax but also an emissions tax, water tax, fertiliser tax, nitrogen tax and an environment footprint tax,” he wrote.
“Farmers are in danger of becoming an ATM industry, providing the Government with farmers’ hard-earned money so the Government can then redistribute money to those they perceive as the helpless and needy, but in my opinion, useless.”
Mr Neal wrote that he understood his views were “harsh” but that it was “indicative of how I feel at the moment”.
He told Stuff “I think there are members of the Government that are anti-farming and would like to see farming be put down altogether.
“We just seem to be getting hit by all these different taxes and it seems to all be aimed at farmers.
“There is work to be done to clean up dairying but a lot of dairy farmers have spent hundreds of thousands trying to do that.
When referring to the “useless”, Mr Neal clarified that “I’m talking about those people that don’t want to be useful members of society.
“They’re quite happy to sponge off the Government and we shouldn’t be paying for them.
“We do need benefits, but there’s lots of people who abuse the system.
“This Government seems to be happy to take the money away from those people earning a living and giving it to the downtrodden, who often don’t want to work … we’ve had a gutsful of it.”