Farmers ‘Should Take Grievances To Polls’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31108, 11 July 1966, Page 3

Farmers ‘Should Take Grievances To Polls’

(New Zealand Press Association) HAMILTON, July 10. “Farmers can’t go on strike, so the Government thinks it’s got us,” the Auckland provincial president of Federated Farmers (Mr W. R. Martin) said in Taumarunui yesterday.

Mr Martin told the southern King Country executive of the federation that political pressure applied by farmers as a body during election year should strengthen on polling day by a vote for the party most likely to give the industry a fair deal. “At the ballot box the responsibility is yours to show you are not going to be taken for a ride as in the past,” he said.

had from the present Government.” Mr Martin criticised increases in shipping charges and fertiliser prices. The latter, he said would cost farmers about £3 million a year but “may well give aspiring cooperative companies the will to proceed and develop their own fertiliser industries.” He said the shipping rises would not have occurred if the Government had not allowed the Conference Lines to gain a stranglehold on the country’s sea transport At least half the Bank of New Zealand’s £1 million profit last year came from the farmer, he said. A bank owned by the farming industry could be financed easily on the £BOO million I which the industry had inves-

ted in New Zealand and would ensure that profits were returned to the industry.

The Agricultural Development Conference produced nothing of value, he said. A tax exemption was the most likely encouragement to farmers to increase production.

The meeting decided to ask the three political parties for their agricultural policies, with special emphasis on a suggestion that increases in breeding stock should be exempt for taxation.

“We must be courageous. We must stick together. We must register a vote of protest at the coming election over the treatment we have