Taking Blame off Dairy Board

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 120, 11 August 1927, Page 1

Taking Blame off Dairy Board

FALL IN PRICES ft AGRICULTURE MINISTER’S VIEW (THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Wednesday. That the fall in butter prices at the end of last season was not the result of the action of the Dairy Produce Control Board is the opininion of the Hon. O. J. Hawken, Minister of Agriculture. The board’s influence on the market, he believed, was very small. The prices received for dairy produce exported from New Zealand were briefly dealt with by Mr. Hawken during his speech in the Budget debate this evening. Unless there should be any misapprehension as to the Government’s attitude, he said, he would state that the Ministry had always agreed that the Dairy Produce Control Board would not be able to make much difference in the prices received for dairy produce at Home. They had always advised caution on the part of the board, and were against pricefixing or any attempt to raise artificially the price of dairy produce in England. While many people contended that an immense loss was caused by the action of the board, it was not really as great as was imagined. Indeed, there was considerable doubt as to whether the board had lost anything. It looked as if the board’s influence on the market was very small, one way or the other. The principal causes of low prices last year were the carrying over

caused by the strike, and speculation which resulted in nearly a million boxes of butter being carried over, and the fact that the amount of butter produced in Europe was 15 per cent, above the average. Referring to land values, Mr. Hawken said that, as far as first mortgages on land were concerned, losses had been exceedingly small on older lands where the productive value was known. Losses on deteriorated land, of which the productivity was not known, had undoubtedly been considerable. However, the Government’s policy regarding deteriorated lands was a bold one. The Hon. A. D. McLeod had been handling the finance of deteriorated lands for many months past, and big sums had been written off in order to bring the settler to a position where he would be able to go forward with a reasonable expectation of making a good living.