LABOUR’S DEFENCE OF CONTROL

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 50, 21 May 1927, Page 15

LABOUR’S DEFENCE OF CONTROL

MR. HOLLAND REPLIES TO PRIME MINISTER Press Association. CHRISTCHURCH, Friday. A reply to the speech by the Prime Minister, Mr. Coates, at Dargaville on Monday evening was made by Mr. H. E. Holland. Leader of the Opposition, in the Choral Hall this evening. There was an attendance of about 700. The Mayor of Christchurch, Rev. J. K. Archer, vice-president of the National Labour Party, presided. A thorough examination by Mr. Coates into the incidence of taxation had resulted in reduction of taxes for wealthy classes, contended Mr. Holland. Extension of scientific agricultural education had resulted in the Government fixing on a site, for the Agricultural College before bringing down the bill, with the result that there was a split in the ranks of its own party. Investigations into farmers’ land banks had been followed by the banks raising the rate of interest on overdrafts.

% The Labour Party, said Mr. Holland, supported the general principle of cooperative marketing, because it saw in it a possibility of transferring the control of the marketing of New Zealand primary products from speculators in Tooley Street to the producers themselves.

In the present case it was not a question of whether there should or should not be control, but merely of who should do the price fixing. If the producers of New Zealand failed to do the work themselves then undoubtedly it would be done by Tooley Street, as it had been done in the past. Control came into active operation in September of last year, and was followed by a crisis In the market affecting New Zealand butter.

Those representative members of the Farmers’ Union were right who declared that the crisis was not due to the operations of control, but to the planless system of non-control which has preceded it, and which led to the storing.

Mr. Holland referred to the strong campaign which had been instituted by the trade in Britain against control, price-fixing, and against the control board generally. Regarding Mr. Paterson, Mr. Holland said his attitude should have been to loyally carry out decisions of the board and to give effect to its policy, but from he day of his appointment to the day " his retirement his attitude was of hostility to the board itself, to control, to price fixing, to the manager of the London agency and to the construction of the agency. Mr. Paterson was undoubtedly carrying out the Government’s policy.

The Labour Party’s proposal was that immediately the New Zealand board should get into touch with a cooperative distributing organisation of Britain for the purpose of more effectively marketing New Zealand dairy produce. Farmers in New Zealand developed co-operative factory production to an extremely high pointThe co-operative union in Great Britain last year handled over £10,000,000 worth of butter and cheese. An endeavour was made to eliminate unnecessary charges between the producer and the consumer. The second proposal which the Labour Party made was that the Dairy Produce Export Control Board, in conjunction with the Government of New Zealand, should approach the British Government with a view to having an effective food produce council set up through which the primary products of the Dominions could be supplied to the consumers of Great' Britain. The Labour Party laid it down that if the interests of primary producers of New Zealand were to be conserved and the interests of the consumers in Britain safeguarded the marketing of our primary produce would have to be based on an organisation that would eliminate the speculator and the manipulator. A vote of thanks to Mr. Holland and of confidence in the Labour Party was passed.