WHEAT POOL SCHEME

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24901, 14 June 1946, Page 7

WHEAT POOL SCHEME

N.S.W. GROWERS CLAIM BIG LOSSES PROPOSAL TO DEMAND COMPENSATION (Rec. 7.30 p.m.) SYDNEY, June 13. “Wheatgrowers have lost £6,128,659 in three wheat pools ” said the general president of the Farmers’ and Settlers’ Association of New South Wales (Mr H. S. Robertson) at a public meeting at Tamworth. He added that the growers would demand compensation from the Government immediately the pools were wound up« unless they were given their just dues. The loss on the fifth pool was £615,235, on the sixth £2,280.871, and on the seventh £3,232,553. Mr Robertson said that the Government’s proposed wheat stabilisation scheme was formulated by a committee of bureaucrats. Growers had a ridiculously small say, although the scheme would either make or mar their industry for the next 10 years. The statement of the Minister of Commerce (Mr W. J. Scully) that the proposals had been unanimously accepted by the Australian Wheatgrowers’ Federation was incorrect. When the federation representatives met the delegates from other affiliated bodies the whole scheme had been found to be unsatisfactory. Representatives of the wheatgrowers in Sydney claim that the Government allocated the wheat from the three pools mentioned to poultry and pig farmers at much below the export value to keep down the price of pork and eggs. The difference between this price and the export value was more than £6,000,000. WOOL PURCHASES BY BRADFORD NONE TILL AUCTIONS resume LONDON. June 12. The wool and textile industry at Bradford has been officially informed that after June 30 no sales of wool from Joint Organisation stocks will be made until auctions commence in the Dominions and the United Kingdom in September. . Presumably the standstill is necessary _to enable United Kingdom and Dominion Wool Disposals, Limited—the new Government corporation charged with the regulated marketing of Dominion wool —to arrange the big change-over from present conditions of supply to auction market disposal, which the trade now learns for the first time is to be-resumed in September. It is also necessary to enable official selling organisations in the Dominions to clear the orders they may have on hand and prepare for the staging of auctions.