HIGHER COST OF LIVING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 September 1943, Page 3

HIGHER COST OF LIVING

INDICATED BY NATIONALISTS’ POLICY. It is the intention of the National Party, if returned to power, to remove the barriers that prevent food costs rising. Further evidence of this is given by Mr A. S. Sutherland. M.P., Nationalist candidate for Hauraki. Mr Sutherland stated that it was the intention of his party, if returned to power, to see that there was an increase in the price paid for farm produce. He also thought that the retail price of butter in New Zealand should be raised. Mr F. W. Doidge, M.P., Nationalist candidate for Tauranga, criticised the fixing of a ceiling price for vegetables. “I have been informed.” said Mr Doidge, “that the ceiling price will be 6/- a dozen for spring cabbages at this time of the year, a sum that quite definitely does not pay the grower” The ceiling price indicated, he believed, would rule for the months of August, September and October, and it would mean that the growers were producing cabbages “at a sacrifice to so-called stabilisation.” The Labour Government’s vegetable scheme will insure that vegetables are available to the people at reasonable prices. Housewives need not be reminded of the ridiculous prices to which cabbages rose in the early years of the war, yet it is these very conditions to which Mr Doidge would have them return. Under Labour, staple foods such as bread, flour, meat, sugar, etc., are still at pre-war prices. Labour is determined to keep living costs down. Housewives who want to keep the lid on prices will vote Labour again.—Advt.