DAIRY MARKETING

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 60, 30 July 1947, Page 8

DAIRY MARKETING

DISCUSSION ON BILL MR W. SULLIVAN’S VIEWS “Tills Bill sets out to hand back to the primary producers something the Government took away from them—something the Government took away from the primary producers in 1936 without even consulting the industry at that particular time,” commented Mr W. Sullivan (National, Bay ©f Plenty) speaking in Parliament in the second reading debate on the Dairy Marketing Commission Bill.

' “The Bill does not go as far as we would like it to go, but there may be certain reasons why the Government now thinks it wise to take this step. It was in the National Party’s policy during the last election that we would set up some representation, that we would give those in the industry the right to have a say in their own affairs, and that those who produced a commodity should have a say in the marketing of that produce. That is what our party stood for. The industry has been battling for this for a long number of years.” Criticising the Bill, Mr Sullivan said the measure asked the dairy industry to nominate a panel of six and from that panel the Government was going to draw three gentlemen most suitable to it. He continued: “Why not say to the industry, ‘You appoint your three and we will appoint our three, and we will agree upon a suitable chairman?’ The industry has to accept the industry’s three, so why should not the Government accept the three nominated by the industry and so get nearer to these people in order to get results. The chairman, said Mr Sulivan, should be absolutely independent, and if it were possible to appoint a Supreme Court Judge to that position some confidence would be restored to the dairy industry in the set-up of the commission to be appointed. Dealing with the position of the dairy industry generally, Mr Sullivan said a sorry state of affairs existed in the country because of the price structure brought about largely by the Government’s inflationary policy. If a 40-hour week were introduced in the dairy industry the reserve of £3 million or £9 million would soon disappear and the overseas realisation received for the farmers’ produce could not maintain a pay-out on that basis. The only alternative would be to tax the whole community or to use the printing press to a greater extent that at present. It was known that lump sum payments were paid as a food subsidy by the British Government, but the New Zealand Government claimed that those lump sum payments did not belong to the primary producer but to the national purse and so it retained those funds. Those lump sum payments were used to pay something off the London debt. For 1947-48 another payment was due amounting to £4,000,000. What was the Government going to do with that money? Would any Minister declare in the House that the representatives of the dairy industry who were said to have agreed with the attitude of the Government to the lump sum payments had full access to all the documents and to all the correspondence with the United Kingdom? The Government was entirely wrong in its attitude towards the primary producers. For years butter and cheese were sold on the local market at a fixed price which was less than the farmers would have received had the produce been shipped away. That had been changed, however, and the subsidy was coming out of the Consolidated Fund. “We agree with that course,” he said, “but what are the Government and the Minister of Agriculture going to do with the sum of £2,500,000 already taken and not yet repaid. If the Government is going to play fair with the primary producers it should reimburse the Dairy Industry Account with the £2,500,000 out of the Consolidated Fund so that the farmers will get their just due instead of being asked, as a section of the community, to find a subsidy for the whole of the community, which was what was happening till last session when the change was made.”