TARANAKI WELCOME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 June 1938, Page 7

TARANAKI WELCOME

PRIME MINISTER’S TOUR DEFENCE OF GUARANTEED PRICE GOVERNMENT NOT SHIRKING OBLIGATIONS (By Telegraph—Press Association.) NEW PLYMOUTH. June 16. The Prime Minister, the Rt Hon M. J. Savage, accompanied by the Minister of Mines, the Hon P. C. Webb, toured South Ta/anaki today and received enthusiastic welcomes at several towns and stopping places. Waverley, Patea. Kakaramea, Mokoia, Hawera and Eltham were visited, and in the evening Mr Savage reached Stratford to receive a warm welcome. Ah unpleasant incident occurred at the civic reception in the borough chambers at Stratford before Mr Savage addressed a crowded meeting in the Town Hall. A controversy had been raging for some days over the de- , cision of the mayor, Mr Percy Thomson, to hold the reception in the borough chambers instead of the Town Hall. The approaches to the chambers and the reception room were packed with people, and when the mayor rose to welcome the Prime Minister he was subjected to noisy heckling. Mr W. J. Polson. M.P., was also heckled, but with more good humour. Mr Savage was warmly cheered. At the public meeting later Mr Savage devoted most of his speech to a defence of the guaranteed price system. “The question of guaranteed prices for butterfat is probably as well known in Taranaki as Mount Egmont,” he said. “I take it most of you can look at one as often as the other, and there can be no doubt that if each is looked at in a clear light both are equally attractive and enduring. “You have heard something of a hollow suggestion that because I assured a conference of provincial delegates of the Farmers’ Union at Wellington that if the dairy-farmers really wanted a special tribunal to fix prices each seasonthey would get it the Government was running away from its plans and its obligations. The Government has no intention of shirking its obligations. Its willingness to consider the appointment of a price-fixing tribunal means nothing more than further proof of the Government's desire to meet the wishes of the working dairy-farmer. “We want to get the best possible returns for the producer of butter and cheese. Any fair-minded man cannot fail to admit that the dairy farmer has never before enjoyed the same security and standard of comfort as he experiences today. “There can be no simpler test than this. What would have happened had there been no guaranteed price and the dairy-farmer had been left to the mercy of overseas market fluctuations? Expressed in pounds of butterfat monthly, the butterfat payments would have ranged from 10.? d to 7Jd a lb. Under the Labour Government’s guaranteed price system, which applied for the first time that season, many butter manufacturing companies paid a uniform payment of HJd a lb of butterfat each month. The companies ultimately paid out an average price for the season of over 131 d a lb for butterfat. “There have been no second thoughts about the position. Statutory ground for making adjustments was prepared in Parliament last session. Everything considered, farmers’ criticism of the Government’s plan is largely in regard to the alleged 'inadequacy of the present guaranteed prices to meet dairyfarm and dairy factory costs. It is known that there is a great difficulty in ascertaining farm costs. The Government is anxious to have accurate information, and it invites representative organisations and groups of dairy-farmers to submit reliable farm cost figures. There is no desire on the Government’s part to do other than live up fully to its price-fixing formula, which actually takes account of farm costs. If farmers think they can get a fairer price by giving their evidence as to costs to a tribunal with a Supreme Court judge as president, then the Goverment will not turn down this proposal.”