FARMERS’ UNION AND POLITICS

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23966, 5 June 1943, Page 6

FARMERS’ UNION AND POLITICS

HINT OF ACTION SEEN POSSIBLE AFFILIATION WITH NATIONAL PARTY (P.A.) INVERCARGILL. June 4. A hint of possible political action by affiliation with the National Party was given by the Dominion president of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union (Mr W. W. Mulholland) in an address to the Southland provincial conference of the union to-day. During the last year the Government had dealt unsympathetically with a number of farmers’ problems, he said. Nothing had done more to unsettle farmers than the tour of the Minister of Agriculture to defend the Government’s actions about the increase of 15 per cent, in wool prices granted by the British Government. The Minister, he said, had trumpeted from a dozen platforms that woolgrowers were receiving 62 per cent, more than pre-war prices. A little investigation did not bear out the Minister’s assertions. The Minister’s tour had perhaps been designed less to justify past action than to pave the way for future, actions. As chairman of the Farmers’ Federation, Mr Mulholland said, he had received a communication which had caused him much concern because it could be taken to mean that the future price of wool would be less than what it was on December 15 last. He had asked the Minister for an explanation. • The Dominion executive had recently passed a resolution expressing no confidence in the Government as one which offered any hope of an economic future for the farming community. It had set up a committee to prepare a policy acceptable to the farming community and to approach political parties, and particularly the National Party, which might be prepared to support that policy. Several meetings with the National Party had been held, and that party’s agricultural policy approached very closely to that of the Farmers’ Union. Delegates at the next annual conference would probably be faced with making a most momentous decision for the future of the farming community.