AN UNDERTAKING EVADED

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 45, 16 November 1940, Page 10

AN UNDERTAKING EVADED

]n its reply to the Prime Minister (Mr. Fraser) the New Zealand Dairy Board has once more emphasized the simple, fundamental point on which the dairy-farmers of .this country base their claim for an increase in the fixed prices paid to them for their produce. A clear-cut arrangement was made under the Guaranteed Prices scheme that prices would be adjusted if costs rose. That arrangement was tantamount to a definite promise—a promise which has not been kept. In evading this undertaking the Minister of Marketing (Mr. Nash), during and since his meeting with the dairy interests in conference, sought to cloud the issue by accusing the dairymen of treating him discourteously. Ihis aspect of the mattei —which at the worst is debatable and in any case quite unimportant—was also seized upon by the Prime Minister in his letter to the Daily Board published on November 5. Now, and very reasonably, the attention of Mr. Eraser has been drawn by the board to the point of the matter. And this—to quote from the board’s reply—is that the board “maintain definitely (and in this attitude have the united support of the industiy) that hi. failing to make some adjustment Mr. Nash evaded his responsibilities in terms of the Act.” There is hardly need at this stage to restate the dairy-farmers’ case in detail. It has been pointed out publicly again and again that the prices returned today are prices fixed as long ago as 1938; that those prices were actually below the amounts recommended to the Government by their own experts as being fair and reasonable; that since 1938 dairy-farming costs, in common with all production costs, have skyrocketed; that a section of the community —namely, the industrial unionists—have been given a shilling in the £ increase in wages to offset the higher cost of living; and, finally, that the dairy-farmers have been given nothing to compensate them for what they have lost—this in spite of the fact that the. Guaranteed Price system promised them that protection. The Prime Minister has vet to make a real answer to that case.

4ii the meantime the Minister of Marketing, treading the hustings on behalf of the Government’s Waipawa candidate, has argued that the claims of dairy-fanners are invalid “because they were better off to the extent of 000,000 than they would have been under the old conditions.” It is not at all clear how Mr. Nash has arrived at this total. If, as seems probable, it includes all matter of assistance-bv-subsidy to dairy-farmers, as well as the State’s loss under the Government’s Guaranteed Prices scheme, it is a wholly misleading comparison between the “old conditions” and the new. But in any case the argument is invalidated by the fact that Mr. Nash has blandly ignored the debit side of the dairy-farmer’s ledger. He has ignored the millions lost by the farmers as a result of all-round increases in cost since 1938. He has chosen to forget that the dairying industry, because it is up against realities as contrasted with platform ruses, is concerned not with the gross amount it has received and is receiving for its products, but with the dwindled and dwindling amount that is left after production costs, living costs and taxation have been deducted from every pay-out.