GUARANTEED PRICE

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 45, 16 November 1940, Page 8

GUARANTEED PRICE

Mr. F. W. Doidge’s Views

"In the working of the guaranteed price system the farmers have been completely betrayed,” said Mr. Doidge, M.P. for Tauranga. when addressing a meeting at Howick. “The Government when introducing the system gave definite pledges which have never been fulfilled.”

Mr. Doidge held that recent admissions by the Minister of Finance, Mr. Nash, had made it impossible for him to justify the Government’s present guaranteed price ixiliey. He said the kind of economy built by Mr. Nash drove the people away from the farms and into the towns.

“The proof of that is to be found in the Government’s own statistics,” Mr. Doidge continued. “In recent years the number of people engaged in agriculture has increased by 21 per cent., the number employed in secondary industries has been increased by .142 per cent., and that drift gathers momentum every year.

“If Mr. Nash wants further reason for the drift Srom the farms to the cities, let him study another batch of his own statistics,” added Mr. Doidge. “He will find that, in New Zealand there are 31,110 dairy-farmers with tin average income of £261, 12,918 farmers who work entirely on their own account and have an average income of £2lB, and 15,138 mixed farmers who have an average income of £244. Altogether there are 60,000 farmers with an average income of less than £5 a week.

."If Hie primary producing industries are the foundation of our economic structure, and we know, they are, we may well ask Mr. Nash what manner of economy he is building in New Zealand.”