BUTTER-MARKETING REGULATIONS.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 71, 10 April 1937, Page 4

BUTTER-MARKETING REGULATIONS.

We yesterday published a telegraphic summary of new regulations issued by the Primary Products Marketing Department by way of controlling the wholesajle marketing of butter within the Wellington Marketing District, which covers practieally the southern half of the North Island and includes the counties of Wairoa and Hawke's Bay. To the general reader this summary will no doubt have appeared Something like a cross-woi'd puzzle, and he would scarcely have been helped to a better undertanding by the full text of the regulations, running to some half-score closely printed pages, now before us. Probably, indeed, even those directly engaged in the dairying industry will require some little time to appreciate all the implications involved. This, however. is perhaps inevitable where a Government sets out to regulate to the minutest detail industries or husinesses conducted by private or co-operative enterprise. In considering these regulations it has, in the first place, to he borne in mind that something of the same kind was contemplated by the Naitional Government when, towards the end of 1934, it passed the Agricultural (Emergency Powers) Act. One great difference, however, is that, as the title of that measure implies, it was intended merely to meet the exigencies of the time and to operate only till coDditions permitted of control being handed hack to those engaged in the industry. It was, in fact, merely devised for the purpose, rtnder exceptional circumstanees, of assisting in a more or less voluntary economic organisation of the industry throughout the country. To this end an Executive Commission was set up in which representatives of the industry were to have by far the largest say in the waiy of working out a scheme. Now, however, by last session's amending legislation, that representative Committee has been abolished and all its powers and discretions have been vested in the Minister of Marketing alone, npon whom has been conferred all the authority-, of an absolute dictator. In this way the organisation and direction of the industry have been taken entirely out of the hands of those most directly concerned for its welfare and . committed to a Minister whose Government has declared its ultimate purpose of "nationalising," that is, taking over to itself, all means of production and distribution not only in this industry but also in all others as well. To those who have eyes to see it will be patent that the regulations now issued indicate only another step in that direction so far as dairying is concerned. The first was quite obvious when the Government decided to set itself up in business at Wellington for the distribution of dairy produce. No douht these regulations are in part, designed to help it in making an apparent success of that business so as to justify extending it throughout the Dominion to the eventual exclusion of all other distributors and dealers. The regulations themselves are, of course, not without their good points. Such, for instance, is the insistence upou the grading of butter for local consumption as well as for export, though it seems doubtful as to how this will be effee- ' tive in protecting the ultimate consumer unless there are further regulations dealing with the retailers. But, generally speaking, the restraints and restrictions they impose and all the dictatorial and inquisitorial powers they confer cannot but have the effect of checking enterprise and making still harder the already hard lot of many of those engaged in the industry. Although the regulations are ostensibly aimed only att the factories, nearly all of them co-operative, the effects must, of course, in the end fall upon the suppilers in the form of diminished returns. Qoming to a more specific phase of these regulations as they affect the dairymen of Hawke's Bay and Wairoa counties, they can scarcely but feel some' natural indignatioa that they should be among the "dogs" upon whom this .experiment is to be tried, while elsewhere throughout the Dominion their fellows are left free to reap what benefit they may. There is such a manifest injustice in this that it needs no el^boration to expose it. For others the home market i? left open to he made the most and hest of, while they are to he deprived of whatever little profit might be gained from it. The Government has, of course, said that when it is seen how the regulations work they will be extended to cover the whole Dominion, but in the meantime those now brought under tfclem are placed at a very madnfest and very serious disadvantage such as they can scarcely but resent.