PRODUCERS PROTEST

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 387, 22 June 1928, Page 1

PRODUCERS PROTEST

DISSATISFIED WITH CONTROL BOARDS LETTER TO PRIME MINISTER “I have been instructed to inform you that protests from the honey producers against the operation of the Honey Control Board are being renewed with even greater insistence,” stated a letter read at yesterday’s meeting of the council of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, which the president, Mr H. T. Merritt, has sent to the Prime Minister. The protests formed the subject of a letter to the Minister of Agriculture on December 4, 1926, and Mr. Merritt’s latest letter stated that the statement of the position still held good. “My chamber therefore ventures to hope that under the circumstances you may now be able to see your way to authorise not only the departmental inquiry asked for, but will also reconsider the wisdom of revising the powers vested in the existing control boards,” continued the letter. “The present very extraordinary development in the affairs of the Dairy Control Board has once more brought this institution into the limelight, and in such a manner as to cause the business community of Auckland and province grave concern. “This chamber is not concerned with any aspect of the question other than the prosperity of the dairying industries, and through them of the Dominion, and it is the considered opinion of the executive of this chamber that the Dairy Control Board as at present constituted is seriously discredited. The affairs of the industry have again reached a crisis, should the issues to be determined be left in the hands of a body the members of which are so much at variance one with the other. We last had the honour of addressing you on this question on March 21, 1927, when we urged that the compulsory powers of the Dairy Control Board be abrogated. Does not the present deadlock demand such a revision of the board’s powers?” A reply from Mr. Coates, to the effect that he would confer with the Minister of Agriculture, was read.