DAIRY BOARD ELECTION.

Marlborough Express, Volume LX, Issue 229, 28 September 1926, Page 4

DAIRY BOARD ELECTION.

The success of the ' two candidates for seats on the Dairy Control Board who advociated a modefate poliey, as against the' retiring members wrho adhered to the form of absolute control favored by the Board as a whole, has created a new situation. The defeat of Mr Dalrymple and Mr Fisher by Mf Corrigan and Mr Timpany, both on a tonnage hasis and on the votes of suppliers, is held to indicate that, had the suppliers known what "control" really meant, the Act would never have been •passed. That is a moot point, and there does not seeni to be much profit -in. fighting 'the battle over again at the present' stage. Nor, while- it is, perhaps, too much to expeet unanimity in the treatment of all details,. would it be a good thing for the Dominion to have the Board displaying a state of dissension. Develop■ments will be watched with much anxiety ; but the very fact that there is so mud to wait for in respect to the exact natnre of the Board 's pollcy is a strong reason for restraint on the part of the critics. Whether Mr Fisher, who was defeated by Mr Timpany in the Southland election, 'is ibelieved or not in respect to his statemenfr characterising the cabled report that a million boxes of New Zealand butter wero held in cold st-orage' in Britain as an "outrageous lie, " emanating from marlcet-rigging speeulators, and designed to throw discredit on the Control Board, he cannot be far wrong in pointing out that until the beginning of this month the Board had nothing whatever to do with the (marketing of produce, and all it did was to regulat© shipping in New Zealand. There is much good sense in the view expressed by the Wellington Post, which is opposed to .absolute control, that as the die is east. for this season, at any rate, the Board should be given a fair chance to make good, if it can. Equally pertinent is the suggcstion that the Board should n'ote the portents, and take special pains to flnd out a real dividing line •(if there is one) between the regulation of markcts for stabilisation and the starvation of inarkets for pricetixi n g.