WELLINGTON TOPICS

Hokitika Guardian, 7 January 1928, Page 1

WELLINGTON TOPICS

THE I’ORK SUBSIDY. MORE PROTESTS. (Special to “ Guardian.”) WELLINGTON, Jan. 5. No progress seems to have been made with tiie Government's pork subsidizing scheme during the holidays j but .Ministers arc now returning to work, like ordinary mortals, and in the course o|' a lew days an announcement of the conditions attached to the State bounty may lie expected. Judging irom the statement made by the Minister o( Agriculture the other day the distribution of the £3(1,000 this year will be hedged around by demands and restrictions which may somewhat lighten the load upon the taxpayers. Tltht, however, remains to he seen. .Meanwhile the scheme is being assailed from various quarters and even by some of the very people the Prime Minister sought to assist. "While I, as a pig breeder,” ' correspondent writes to the evening paper. " would he very pleased to receive any doles or assistance the Government mnv he pleased to bestow on the pig industry, on the other hand 1 cannot disregard the tact that I shall ho i a lied uiion, as a taxpayer, to find that dole.” The same writer expresses astonishment that the Minister ol finance after impressing upon the whole community the need (or the utmost economy in both public and private expenditure should countenance a gross piece of extravagance. MORE GOVERNMENT IN BUSINESS The “ Post’s ” denounces strongly the Government’s latest excursion into business. “ Its object,” it says, “ is to reimburse farmers exporting pork for any loss they may incur in their venture into a market already over-run by Continental and Irish competitors. Speaing at Hawern oil this subsidy. Mr Hawkon said it was a ‘ new departure.’ It is indeed, and a most pernicious one, economically considered pork is a by-

product of the New Zealand dairy industry. So is casein, so is milk powder. But ii would be just as reasonable for the manufacturers of either or both of these articles to ask and expect to he subsidized out of the public funds in order that they can be rendered immune from the competition of Dutch, Danish and other competitors in the world’s market. Is the country through the Government, to he compelled to make good all losses? It looks like it.” The " Post ” goes on to say that there is not the slightest ground for the Government to assume that the prices of pork in the British or other over-seas markets will advance in the near future or that the position will have improved three years lienee when the Government will have expended £90.000 upon its Christmas gift. SUPPLY AND DEMAND. If the Government commits the Treasury to a subsidy of £30.000 a year for three years it may he sure that the dairy farmers will make out a good case for the payment of the full sum of £90,000. The only chance of increasing the demand for New Zealand pork lies in improving its quality and reducing the cost of prodution and export, A subsidy, as all history shows,

can only tend to lessen the incentive towards this end. “ The law of supply mid demand,” as the " Post ” reminds Mr Coates and his colleagues, "fixes the price of pork as it fixes the price of most other commodities, and nothing that tlie Government may do in defiance of that law can be done except at the great cost of the people of this Dominion as a whole. If the principle of subsidising pork is to establish a precedent, and those interested in other exports cannot he blamed for so regarding it, what will be the end of it? What about honey, kauri gum, fruit, flax, rabbitskins, sausage skins, tallow and pelts and a hundred and one other articles exported from New Zealand, all taking the risk of tlie world’s markets?” So far, no one on the other side has attempted a reply.

THE RIGHT AND THE WRONG. An astute business man, with largo interests in bacon curing and export, who happened to be visiting Wellington during the holidays, said he would have nothing but approval for any wellconsidered effort the Government might make to encourage the dairy farmers to raise pigs suitable for export. Hitherto, he said, any movement in this respect had been confined to private en-

terprise, and the farmers in general had only just begun to realise they were raising numbers of pigs quite unsuitable for the Home market. In. his own experience the farmers Who took their pigs as seriously as the best of them took their milking cows had no difficulty in getting rid of their ]K)i k. Jt was in active demand, indeed, and gave good returns to both producers and curers. The Government’s subsidy, in the judgment of this authority. was not required by the men who were raising the l ight sort of pigs, and was not deserved by those who, through sheer ignorance of the business, were raising the wrong sort. By the expenditure of £4OOO or' £SOOO in providing the farmers with intelligible instruction and in importing suitable stud pigs for the export trade, the Government would do a much better turn to the producers than it will by an indiscriminate distribution o£ £90,000 among the thriftless and tho unobservant.