GOVERNMENT AS FARMERS AND RETAILERS.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 57, 30 November 1937, Page 4

GOVERNMENT AS FARMERS AND RETAILERS.

Though yesterday's parliamentary discussion on the vote of funds for the Government's land settlement schemes did not lead to any definite eonclusion of importance, it still had certain phases that are of interest. In the first place, listeners-in would probably gain, from the manner in which tlie Minister • conducted his case, that there was some warrant for Col. Hargest's reference to some of the members of Cabinet as being irresposible importations — though we are not quite sure as to whether or not the Hon. Langstone is an importation. However that may be, it would seem as if Opposition members, and, indeed, even the Chairman of Committees had taken what he had to say somewhat light-heartedly. Still, coming from a Minister of the Crown, his utterances may reasonably be taken as affording some indieation of the poliey of the Governmcnt to which he belongs. After he had announced that some ten or twelve hnndred — likely to be shortly increased to fifteen hundred— men on the unemployed register were being given work on the "developmen" of Crown land, he was asked whether it was the Governmen's intention to settle some of these men on the land and give them some title to the permanent occnpation of it. In reply to this question he said that "a lot of humbug had been talked about giving titles" and that "the men had good jobs with standard rates of pay and a forty-honr week." This he appeared to regard as a qnite conclnsive answer, though no intimation was given as to what was to be done with the land once its "development" had been completed. This led to the very natural inference on the part of an Opposition member that the Government intended to retain it and pursue some plan } of "collective farming," such as was adoptcd byf the Com- j munist Government of Soviet Rnssia. This seemed a fair enough deduction to draw and is in full keeping with the basic principle of Labour policy — tlie "nationalisation or socialisation of all means of production, distribution and exchange" — which, however, is being kept as mueh as possible in the background, while at the same time easily detected steps towards its practical achievement are in almost daily evidence— the gradual reduction of all means of public transport into the Government's hands providing an outstanding instance. Another example is, of course, to he found' in the assumption of control over the internal marketing of all dairy produce required for home consnmption, with Mr. Picot in command at a salary of £2000 a year after getting some £70,000 for his business. The idea would seemingly be that the Government now contemplates eventually entering also into the further business . oi production in order to provide itself with the material for distribution from the rather costly depot, a prospect of competition that will scarely be welcome to dairy farmers working something like a sixty-hour week in order to make a bare living This, of course, is only the beginning of things, and it is not ont of the way to imagine that Mr. Langstone and his colleagues have it in ultimate view to follow the example of the Queensland Labour Government and acquire — by one means or another — land upon which they may grow all the farm produce required for stocking the retail shops that will follow as a natural sequence to the Picot wholesale transaetion, though their owners may not be qnite so liberally treated. It will probably count for very little with our Government that M. Stalin and his Government are to a very large extent abandoning the scheme of collective farming and find it more politic to give the peasants some individual proprietary interest -in the land they are cultivating. Nor probably will it deter thcm :to recall the complete failure, resulting in the loss of many mililons to the taxpayers, which attended the Queenslanci Government's vcntures in farming and produce trading. In this, as in many other direetions, our Ministers seem quite blind to the unhappy experiences of others who have already tested the schemes with which they are experimenting as if they were something quite new and of their own conception. Incidentally it may be noted that one of Mr. Langstone 's colleagues, the Minister of Labour. in coming to his assistance, let himself go in a way that very clearly indicates how the suecess that is attending the visits of Opposition members to various electorates is "getting under the skin" of members of Cabinet. "Members of the Opposition," said Mr. Armstrong, "would, by getting out into the country and inspecting Government schemes, get more enliglitenment and do more good for • the country than by going round and holding their little tin-pot, . cockroach meetings." No parliamentarian would express himself thus unless he was feeling himself seriously ruffled. • » These Opposition members are not going round looking for enlightenment, but imparting it, and in a way that can scarcely * be palatable to secretive Ministers.