Mr Walsh Criticises Pool Accounts Policy

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28265, 1 May 1957, Page 18

Mr Walsh Criticises Pool Accounts Policy

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, April 30 i Payment to farmers out of (reserve accounts meant that the public was being imposed on to ' ensure that one section of the | community received an artificially ; high income, said Mr F. P. Walsh I in his presidential address to the annual conference of the Federation of Labour today. Mr Walsh said that time and again the federation's executive committee and he had warned of the folly of irresponsible politicians in the dairy industry raidI ing the reserves to curry favour 1 with the unthinking farmer. He said that the farmers were now reaping the benefit of the pool accounts. It could be held that this was due to their longsightedness. Indeed, from the day the National Party became the Government it and many of its farmer friends did everything possible to torpedo the whole structure of stabilisation. Although produce prices overseas were increasing rapidly, the Government had agreed to a policy of no further accretions to the pool accounts and for all surpluses to be paid out to the primary producers. There was insufficient regard by the Government and a large number of the primary producers’ leaders to where this spendthrift policy would lead the country. Government “Sabotage” “Today the farmers are glad enough that they have so-me reserves to draw on, but they would be better pleased if their leaders, together with the Government, had not sabotaged the policy which would have made the reserve funds considerably larger,” said Mr Walsh. j “There was the secret agreement which the Government and the leaders of the dairy industry tried to conceal from the public and the Arbitration Court. “Briefly, this agreement made provision for all kinds of pretexts to stop the reserve funds from being built up and to make larger payouts without consideration to the best interest of New Zealand as a whole. It perpetuated what was recognised by both the Government and the farmers as a thoroughly out-of-date and phoney cost structure. “After this in successive years . there were increased payouts by means of the double-headed . penny system, by which payouts could be increased either with a rising market or a falling one,” ! said Mr Walsh. “The latest manoeuvre is to take power from the Dairy Pro- I ducts Marketing Commission and 1 to make the dairy industry even more completely a pawn for in- I dustry politicians. ( “Pure Inflation” <

“Today the butter producer is receiving up to £lOO a ton in excess of market realisations Cheese producers are receiving £lO a ton in excess of realisa-

tion. How long can this go on? E This is pure inflation, and only , serves to push prices up against all of us.” ’ Mr Walsh said that the origin- ! ators of the pool accounts had in, mind the building of a fund to 1 cushion the industry against ad- ! versity. Moreover, they had in mind that before the funds were used the whole cost of the in- ; dustry should be carefully examined, and if it were found that the industry was in difficulties they should be used to help the industry over a difficult period. Instead of this, however, the pool accounts were being squandered to give "payouts at record levels on a cost structure which was known to be fictitious. “This procedure can only lead to practices in the industry which are uneconomical and inefficient, instead of an industry geared to meet competitive costs on the world market,” he said. “We are breeding a race of inefficient, slaphappy. irresponsible marketeers, who honestly believe that they can command sufficient political pressure to ensure that the government of the day continues to treat the dairy farmer as a privileged class. “It is with this illusion of dairy godmothers at the back of their minds that the all-time numerical record delegation has descended on London in an endeavour to convince the people and Government of Great Britain that they should be as susceptible as the New Zealand Government.” said Mr Walsh. “The time has arrived to realise that we have to produce and sell our produce on a competitive market. This means that the dairy industry has got to come down out of the clouds and throw overboard the false standards on which it has been deluding itself. Cheese Price in N.Z. “One example of where we are getting to is seen in the price New Zealand consumers pay for cheese. Trade unionists and the community in general are paying an extra £lO a ton for all cheese consumed in New Zealand, a sum ; higher than the overseas market ' realisations, so as to ensure that ■ a privileged section of the com- ( munity gets an income higher than their own. . “This practice savours of dump- i ing and is similar to the very thing i the leaders of the dairy industry ; and the Government spokesmen j bitterly complain about when the J United States follow out this i practice with their surplus dairy ’ produce.

“In the first place, the guaranteed price was devised at a time when the dairy farmers were a depressed class and it was considered sound economics to prevent this important industry from becoming insolvent and to save the dairy farmers from poverty,” Mr Walsh said.

“But it is a horse of a different colour when the general public is called upon to contribute directly and indirectly to maintain one group in a position of privilege with advantages far in excess of those enjoyed by the wage and salary earners.” Mr Walsh said that the Government had established a series of monopolies in which the consumer had no protection. If the Government had stuck to its declared principle of private enterprise and free competition, the general public would have had a much better deal than it was receiving under producer-controlled monopolies.

Space Travel Address.— The history of man’s desire to conquer space was traced by Professor D. F. Lowden, professor of mathematics and an authority on astronautics, in an address to 100 members of the Engineering Society of Canterbury University College. He described how, by the consideration of escape velocities, theoretical fuel combinations, and modern engineering techniques, modern rockets could be made Jo leave the earth’s atmosphere, and then discussed space navigation by using gravitational arcs of attraction.