A MYTH EXPLODED.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 March 1939, Page 4

A MYTH EXPLODED.

A NEW and rather amusing turn is given to the potato section of the great potatoes-oranges controversy between Australia and New Zealand by a report that it is practically certain, unless there is an immediate and substantial fall in the price of Australian potatoes, that the Federal Cabinet will decide to lift the embargo on the importation of New Zealand potatoes. It is explained that the “concession’’ will operate purely as a temporary emergency measure, and that the ban will be reimposed as soon as Australian supplies become normal and the price falls below a level to be fixed somewhere between £l5 and £'2o a ton. The mere fact that this plan, on the respectable authority of the “Sydney Morning Herald,’’ is being considered seriously, blows to pieces the argument on which Australia has relied in keeping up her end of the potatoes and oranges controversy. Bearing in mind, no doubt, that she has had recently a favourable balance in her trade with New Zealand of some £5,000,000 a year, our sister Dominion habitually has affirmed, with hei hand on her heart, that she excludes New Zealand potatoes only because they are subject to a disease which must not be allowed Io infect the tuber stocks of the Commonwealth. .In the proposal now made to admit New Zealand potatoes temporarily, at intervals, there is an open confession that the tale of disease in these potatoes is or was a mere subterfuge, covering up the design of giving a highly protected market to the potato growers of Tasmania.

,11, is ridiculous enough that there should be any restrictions on trade across the Tasman Sea in goods that, are available on one side and really needed on the other, but in the niattei of hard bargaining over this trade’ Australia has gone well beyond the bounds of justice or reason. Not long ago the Federal Prime Minister, Mr Lyons, had the effrontery to say, in effect, that New Zealand was badly placed to raise the question of the potato embargo because she had adopted a, policy of import regulation. The actual position evidently is that it is by a strict regulation of imports from Australia, if at all, that New Zealand will obtain something like fair treatment in trans-Tasma'n trade. There is much to draw the South Pacific Dominions together in friendship and understanding, hut that desirable state of affairs will not be advanced by allowing Australia to grasp at an unfair share of advantage in her trade dealings with New Zealand,