UNIFICATION IN STATE'S FARM FINANCE POLICY

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 191, 2 November 1927, Page 12

UNIFICATION IN STATE'S FARM FINANCE POLICY

CREDITS AND ADVANCES INTERMEDIATE BILL PASSED (THE SUN'S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Tuesday. A lively fear that the operation of the Rural Intermediate Credit E3oard would interfere materially with the State Advances Department was expressed in the House of Representatives this evening when members discussed the Rural Intermediate Credit Bill, which eventually was passed through the final stages after a multiplicity of amendments effected by the Government itself in committee. The Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates, was ready to assure the House, however, that no interference with the State Advances Department was intended or anticipated. He confessed that the solution of handling the finances of long-term credits, intermediate credits, lands for settlement and soldier settlement, was one that exercised the minds of the authorities a good deal, and, while a definite plan had not been formulated, he suggested as a possibility the eventual establishment of one board to administer the whole of these departments. Practical knowledge and commercial brains would have to be employed in the administration of such an institution, which was as yet the only suggestion in his mind. He asked the permission of the House to increase the membership of the Rural Intermediate Credit Board from five to seven so that, if necessary, the Government could make two extra appointments and establish co-ordination between intermediate and longterm credits, which he considered would be advisable in the interests of the ultimate success of the scheme. Mr. H. E. Holland: Where would the State Advances stand then? Mr. Coates: State Advances cannot, meet the demands that come along now. There is no intention to interfere with the State Advances, which has worked and is working well. Mr. Holland: Is there any intention of putting a working man on the housing board? Mr. Coates: I do not know. I am not sure that it would be an. improvement in any case. He did not anticipate any great difficulty of eventually co-ordinating all these State-lending institutions and assisting the Minister of Lands in a solution of his lands-for-settlement and soldier-farmer problems. Mr. Holland claimed that this board threatened to supersede the State Advances, and Mr. G. W. Forbes said that as a practical farmer he was not prepared to accept the scheme as anything but an experiment. "Taking farmers as a whole,” he said, “they are strongly individualistic in their outlook and like to run their own show.”