I joined the ACT Party long before anyone had heard of COVID-19 because I saw a need for real change. My mission was to return a sense of pride to rural New Zealand, and I thought the ACT Party would help me provide that opportunity. I want all farmers again to feel that sense of fairness, which for too long has been missing. We farmers are tired and weary of being political fodder for some New Zealanders' guilty conscience about their own environment, or being pandered to during an election campaign to then only be ignored when the votes have been cast. Ever more, the political class speaks less to the provincial communities it once embraced so vigorously. Those communities now feel more distant from their urban cousins, more at odds with the way they see their own backyard. 