Butter Talks P.M. SHOULD HAVE GONE, SAYS F.O.L. LEADER

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31006, 11 March 1966, Page 3

Butter Talks P.M. SHOULD HAVE GONE, SAYS F.O.L. LEADER

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, March 10. New Zealand had done as well as could be expected in its butter quota negotiations with Britain because the Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake) had not seen fit to send a top-level Government negotiator, the president of the Federation of Labour (Mr T. E. Skinner) said today. Mr Skinner said he thought that in view of the seriousness of the situation before the talks began, Mr Holyoake should have gone himself, or at least sent the Minister of Agriculture or Overseas Trade.

The chairman of the Dairy Board (Sir Andrew Linton) was an interested party, said Mr Skinner. It was like sending a car salesman overseas to find out why a firm was not getting its share of the car market.

It needed a top-level Government negotiator to express the importance of the market to the country in general. “COMMENDABLE”

“The efforts of Sir Andrew Linton in London over the hard and protracted negotiations in connexion with the butter quotations into the United Kingdom should be highly appreciated by all,” Mr G. E. Stock, president of the

Associated Chambers of Commerce, said last night. “His task, and that of his team, was no sinecure, and his achievement is highly commendable, but the sobering fact is that whilst the price at which the negotiations were finalised is a good one in any man’s country for the commodity in question, namely, butter, the hard facts are that our costs in New Zealand are so astronomical and artificial that our dairy farmers cannot apparently achieve a profit after they have paid for producing, packing, despatching and shipping.

; “This should be a lesson to us that we must streamline bur costs, and this does not necessarily mean a reduction in wages of those concerned, but it should mean that greater effort over the 40-hour week should be made, more attention should be paid to efficiency and there should be a team spirit to enable us to accept the prices offered overseas for our produce and still make a margin of profit.

“Another thing which should be remembered is that in England the housewife has to nay up to 5s a pound for butter whereas in this country we purchase, eat and waste butter for the princelv sum of 2s a pound. “Let this be a lesson to al) because the day may come when we will not even reach the price offered at the present time and the United Kingdom may not be able to continue to purchase from us in the quantity we want and to satisfy their own economic needs.” BIG SURPLUS “There is too much surplus butter at present in Europe, particularly in countries which are protecting their own high domestic price levels and seeking to dump surplus butter on the British market,” said Sir Andrew Linton.

“It does appear to me that to some extent at least Britain is using butter within the quota system as a barter bargaining factor with some eastern European countries. “Let me reduce the pricedemand situation to as simple a basis as possible in order to illustrate the consequences of the present agreement. “In brief the total consumption of butter in the United Kingdom in the 1965-66 quota year has been approximately 475,000 tons—a total weekly off-take of just over 9000 tons. “The average price realised for New Zealand butter over

this period was about 320 s per cwt.

“The total stocks in cool store at the end of March, 1966, are likely to be of the order of 80,000 tons or some 15,000 tons more than a year earlier, and far too large and costly a stock to maintain in Britain.” WEEKLY BOOST

The imports now authorised both as basic quotas and supplementary authorisations, plus local production of 45,000 tons and a 10,000 ton reduction in stocks, would provide 495,000 tons of butter for consumption and would require a weekly off-take of some 9500 tons of butter.

To increase average butter consumption by nearly 500 tons a week throughout the year would require a marketing exercise of considerable magnitude. Sales of New Zealand butter would have to be increased from about 3200 tons a week to about 3500 tons. ACTED AS UNIT

The delegation had received the fullest co-operation and assistance and agreement from the New Zealand Government and had acted at all times as a fully integrated and co-operating unit. “I firmly believe that these factors materially assisted in a settlement which, although not as satisfactory to New Zealand as we had hoped, was much better than at an earlier stage appeared possible,” Sir Andrew Linton said.