“CONTRACTS NOT KEPT”

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19994, 20 July 1939, Page 5

“CONTRACTS NOT KEPT”

GUARANTEED PRICE PLAN ATTITUDE OF FARMERS (Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. The marketing side of the Government’s guaranteed price scheme was thoroughly successful, remarked Mr. E. B. Gordon (Nat.. Rangitikei) during his first Parliamentary speech in the House of Representatives. This admission was received with laughter from the Government members, whose next interjections, however, conveyed disapproval, for Mr. Gordon added: “If this party had come into power it would have had a similar scheme, because the Dairy Board was working out a marketing system along similar lines."

His objection to the present system was ’that the Government commandeered the farmers’ produce. The great dispute between them and the Government was that the contract had been broken through the Government refusing to take into consideration ‘the rising costs of dairy production. They only wanted British justice, but last season’s price was 3d a lb. less than the cost of production; yet the Government desired, in the interests of stability, to renew on the same 'basis. Costs Must Be Stabilised

What required to be stabilised, declared Mr. Gordon, was the factor of costs. As a small producer, and certainly not “a wool king,” he continued, he would put a few questions to the Government regarding its suggestions to extend the guarantee to meat and wool. The wool producer knew that the dairy farmer had been let down; therefore, some points would have to be cleared up. They wished to know if their costs would be taken into consideration, and whether they would retain control over their own product, because they could market it more efficiently than any State department. The cost of the Dairy Board under the former system was £78,000 per annum, tout the present marketing scheme cost £192,000.

He could assure the House that the deei!.-:- a ds ry >. g was very real, for since the session started there had been four instances in his own electorate wnere dairy herds had been sold out. There was bound to be a huge decrease in production this year, because the dairy farmer found it impossible to get labour, the local placement officer having admitted to him last January, when, there was a keen demand for help on the farms, that he had far more jobs than applicants for them. From the Labour benches, Mr. C. F. Skinner (Motueka) stated that his constituents, who grew apples and pears and were surrounded by dairy farmers enjoying the stability of the guaranteed price, were anxious to have it extended to the orchardists. What, he asked, had become of the Nationalists’ scheme of compensated prices?