PARLIAMENTARY

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 6 July 1917, Page 5

PARLIAMENTARY

MEAT TRUST MENACE. OPERATIONS IN DOMINION. WELLINGTON, July 4. Tie operations of the meat trust were referred to by Mr. V. H. Reed (Bay of Islands) in the House of Representatives to-night. He said he was sorry that the Prime Minister and" Sir Joseph Ward had not brought back with them a more definite plan of attack upon the threatened operations of the meat trust. They would have to attack it here in t-he freezing works of New Zealand. . No freezing works should be owned by shareholders who were not New Zealanders. They must attack it in the shipping and in the home markets. There was nothing to prevent the Goevrnment from dealing with it in New Zealand. The Government should bring down legislation for the purpose of preventing the trust coming here if it was not - here already. Personally he thought that it was here.

Mr. Reed said he thought he had seen its inliuence in the North Auckland Peninsula. If the Government prevented outside capital from going into New Zealand freezing works it would prevent the trust from getting a -hold.

Mr. Massey said that he proposed to refer the matter to the Agricultural Committee or a special committee for inquiry and report, to obtain an opinion as to the most effective way of preventing the trust from getting a hold in New Zealand. The matter was receiving the attention of the British Board of Trade, but it was not likely to be able to do very much until the war was over.

MINISTERS AT THE FRONT. WELLINGTON, July 5. “We had no exciting experiences or adventures in France,” said Mr. Massey in his speech yesterday. “The artillery was blazing away at the time, but nothing even came near us.” (Laughter.) A Member; Oh, they don’t carry 100 miles. (Laughter.), Mr. Massey added that he Was Bur§ that members of Parliament would have been sorry if anything had happened to them. (Hear, hear.) At one of the places they stopped at, a shell had fallen some time before, and he had brought the shell out with him as a memento.

Referring to the same matter, Sir Joseph Ward said it had been suggested that they had never been near the front on their visit to France. “Why,” he said, “we were only 800 yards from the front fighting line, and if our predecessors there of The Parliamentary party were any nearer than that —

Mr. Lee: Sixty yards. (Laughter.)

Sir Joseph Ward: “Then they must have been at a place where there were no Germans at all. We were at a place where they had smashed a'building the day before.” He went on to say that they had been in a dug-out where a man had his legs blown off the day before. He mentioned these and other matters to show that they had actually been in points of danger. They had gone everywhere the officers had taken them. He went on to pay a tribute to the great British Army organisation. The army was the ibest-fed, best-equipped, and the best-cared-for army in the world.