TARIFF AND SUBSIDY.

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 225, 23 February 1928, Page 6

TARIFF AND SUBSIDY.

TRADE WITH AUSTRALIA. New Zealand Butter and Pork. “ New Zealand dairymen were not benefiting by exports to Australia, but only the speculator.” This statement, made recently at Murwillumbah (N.S.W.) by the Federal Treasurer, Dr. Earle Page, is a very serious one if true. People in the trade say tlir.t it is not true. One firm of dairy produce merchants states that it has supplied the New Zealand Department of Industries and Commerce with data proving that, over a series of shipments to Australia, the New Zealand dairymen have directly and materially benefited, and that the firm ’s charges have not been more than an entirely reasonable percentage of turnover. Both last winter and during the current season the Australian market has proved at times important to New Zealand factories, enabling them to earn fd to Id per lb. more than the London market could at the same time give them.

For the current export season beginning last August and including allotments to the end of February, Australia is taking 73,100 boxes of New Zealand butter as compared with 30,430 boxes in the- corresponding period of last season. This is the more-than-doubled trade which Dr. Page is desribing as being beneficial only to speculators, and which the Commonwealth Parliament’s new 6d duty proposes to extinguish. So anxious is a section of Australian dairymen to operate this new duty before its normal statutory time (June 15) that a Minister will probably be sent from Australia to New Zealand to negotiate for its earlier operation—and s to open up the whole question of Customs ‘ ‘ reciprocity ” between Australia and New Zealand.

The New Zealand trade is willing and able to rebut the accusation that *Jbe 73,100 boxes of butter sent this '•eason and the 30,430 boxes last season to the benefit of speculators and ’ w *ot of dairymen. If Dr. Page had stated that speculators on the Australian side had benefited by importations of butter from New Zealand, that would have been another matter. But he is reported as saying unequivocally —and the report has not been recalled —that New Zealand dairymen “do not benefit.' ’

‘‘ In giving information to the Department of Industries and Commerce as to the facts of the case,” said a Wellington merchant yesterday, “we wish to remove some of the misrepresentation that arises when these subjects are discussed in political quarters —misrepresentation that hinders a fair presentation of the issue.’ ’

Side by side with the campaign which Australian dairying interests are conducting against New Zealand dairy produce is a movement to increase the duty on bacon and pork. If the pig raisers succeed as well as the dairy producers have done, the increase will make the duty prohibitive.

A similar charge of misrepresentation arises out of the pork duty publicity as out of Dr. Page’s speech. For instance, the press campaigners in Sydney quote, in justification of their case, the New Zealand subsidy on exported pork; but the New Zealand trade at once points out that this subsidy applies to pork exported to Britain and Europe and not to pork exported to Australia.

‘'The New Zealand subsidy on pork,” said a member of the trade, does not affect pork sent to Australia, and does not help the New Zealand pork exporter to compete in the Australian market.”

Any effect that it would have on the Australian trade would appear, in fact, to be quite in the other direction, by tending to divert New Zealand exports from the Australian to the British and European markets. In the trade it is thought that the New Zealand Government, in drafting the terms of the subsidy, was probably at pains not to step on Australian toes or to afford any ground for a grievance which the Australian press has nevertheless caught hold of, groundless though it be.

Australia has no more right 1:o object to a New Zealand Government subsidy on pork sent to Britain and Europe than New~ Zealand has to object to the butter export bonus provided by Australia’s “Paterson Plan” on butter sent to the Old Country. It looks as though interested parties in Australia are determined to raise as many points of tariff advantage as possible prior to the Ministerial mission’s departure to New Zealand to discuss the situation arising out of the prohibitive butter duty.

Neither iu the case of the dairy produce duties nor the proposed pork and bacon duties can there be any doubt as to the country aimed at. Tn both lines, New Zealand is the only considerable exporter to Australia. Of Australia’s imports bacon and ham, 375,0001 b., New Zealand is credited with 352,00Q1b.; and of Australia’s pork imports, 733,0001 b., almost the whole came from New Zealand.

The crux of the situation, which is mainly political, is that the Commonwealth Government, facing a general election, does not know how to reconcile rural voters to the high protection received by urban secondary industries unless rural primary industries receive some sops also.