It is now a week on from the election and it's clear voters have delivered a firm rebuff to the Greens' campaign that farmers were not doing enough to protect the environment.

It seems the message has finally got through – farmers are working hard to clean up rivers, keep their stock out of streams, and to plant more trees.

Hopefully, this will mean the mainstream media will pay less credence to the Greens' antifarming claims – and those from their cohorts Fish & Game, Forest & Bird and others – in future.

In fact, the media were shown by the election result to have been well out of touch with what New Zealanders regarded as the main issues of the campaign.

Dirty politics, while not to be condoned, was seen to be secondary to the more important issue of maintaining the country's economic progress. Increased taxes on the wealthy and on hardearned capital gains were firmly rejected.

And when patronising outsiders tried to tell us we were being spied on and that our leaders were lying to us – at the same time as Australia discovered terrorists in its midst – we punished the people who brought them here.

Some in the new National Government must now feel they have a mandate for some of the policies that failed to make traction in the last term.

But they should heed the prime minister's caution against showing arrogance. That will be hard for some.

It's true the win was a recognition of the Government's sound economic stewardship as well as the calm air of capability, with a touch of patient worldweariness, displayed by John Key as he found himself at the centre of a media maelstrom.

But it was also a rejection of people who tried to hijack the elections. And it was a rejection of the unimpressive alternatives to a National Government.

So, the mandate is not as strong as some might think.

Voters might think well of farmers now, but a move to change the Resource Management Act, for example, to make it easier for controversial water schemes, has to be carefully thought through.

The economic advantages may be obvious, but the environmental gains less so. Taking the frustrations out of a scheme like Hawke's Bay's Ruataniwha would be rewarding, but at the risk of alienating a large section of the community.

It has taken a lot to turn the environmental tide in farmers' favour.

It wouldn't take much to turn it back.

* Jon Morgan is the editor of the NZ Farmer print edition.