"CART BEFORE HORSE"

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 95, 19 October 1944, Page 6

"CART BEFORE HORSE"

MR. HOLLAND'S VIEWS

TAKING OF EVIDENCE

The suggestion that the proper course would be to refer the Milk Bill to the committee, which is to hear evidence on it, before the second reading debate was completed was made by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Holland) in the House of Representatives last naght after the second reading of the measure had been moved by the Minister of Health (Mr. Nordmeyer). Mr. Holland said he did not think there was any quarrel on the score of the objective of the Bill, but as far as its provisions were concerned he thought the measure might be described as a hotch-potch and he would prophesy that it would be hardly recognisable when it came back from the committee.

It had been worth while, said Mr. Holland, to hear the Minister of Health emphasise that there was no bureaucratic control so far as the.Bill was concerned, and also to have the Minister's admission that the Opposition's ! advocacy of decentralisation was cor|rect and that industry could be overI controlled. The Minister had referred to the Bill establishing certain things, but as he read it it was merely a permissive Bill enabling certain things to be done. With three or four exceptions, objections he had received were not to the principle and objective of the Bill, but they asked for different provisions or a reconsideration of some of the proposals. UNWORKABLE BILL. He thought no one would deny there was room for improvement in the milk supply. It was the Government's responsibility to produce some workable scheme,, and in his opinion the present measure was unworkable. It merely allowed someone else to do something and provided legislative authority for that action. It was merely a framework of a Bill and those expected to operate it had never been consulted! and taken into the confidence of the Government. Judging from what the Minister had said he anticipated that the machinery provisions would be greatly altered. He suggested that the cart was being put before the horse by the House being asked to take the second reading debate before the Bill was considered by the committee to which it was to be referred. Even at that stage he would repeat the suggestion he had made during the afternoon that the Bill should first go to the committee. The objective should be to make the. Bill truly effective so that there would in fact be a better milk supply for the people of the Dominion. MORE LOCAL BODIES. Mr. Holland said that the Minister of Internal Affairs was continually telling the country there" were top many local bodies, and here was provision for another series. He noticed that in the first 20 clauses of the Bill there were 25 provisions for Orders in Council, which was a sign that the Government was not clear about how the scheme could be worked. There was a suspicion in the minds of many people that the Bill aimed at the eventual elimination of the small busi-' ness man. Expert opinion, he thought, considered that contamination of milk occurred mainly at the production end, but there was nothing in the measure which would help to improve the herds. #

If there was a plebiscite in Welling-1 ton it would show general satisfaction with the system, though there was a considerable supply of raw milk re- j quired by the people. He considered I that the people would always demand the right to have an alternative supplier. They put up with zoning in wartime, but they had noticed that the price of milk had not come down i as a result. PASTEURISING COST. Mr. Holland said it was remarkable, that if a person produced the highest grade of milk to satisfy those who believed in fresh raw milk, that person would receive for his product th& same payment as if it were bottled, but he would have to pay back to the milk control authority 3Jd or 4d a gallon or whatever was the pasteurising and bottling cost to the Marketing Division. In the four main centres the consumption of milk was 69,000 or 70,000 gallons a day, and for the sake of calculation it could be considered that half was pasteurised and half raw—in Dunedin 70 per cent, of the supply was raw milk and about the same applied to Christen urch. If 35,000 gallons of raw milk was distributed in those four main centres daily and 3Jd or 4d a gallon for that supply was paid over to the Milk Marketing Division of the Internal Marketing Department it would mean in rough figures something between £200,000 and £300,000 a year going into the coffers of the Department at the expense of the consumers. The control of that money would be in the hands of the Minister of Marketing, and they knew from past experience what that meant. Those who wanted pasteurised milk should be able to obtain it, and those who wanted raw milk should be supplied at a price commensurate with a fair reward to those who handled'the product and the people should have a right to an alternative supply if their present supply was unsatisfactory. Mr. W: T. Anderton (Government, Eden) said he would support the Leader of the Opposition in any endeavour to obtain a clause in the' Bill which would give mandatory powers to milk councils for the control of the milk right from the cowshed to the consumer's door.

Mr. R. M. Macfarlane (Government, Christchurch South) said that when questions of milk were brought before New Zealand certain interests set out to misrepresent the position entirely. That had been the position in Christchurch, and apparently Dunedin was nqw having the same experience. In Dunedin, a circular completely misrepresenting the Bill had been circulated. The documents very cleverly tried to side-track the issue by making a contest between raw and pasteurised milk, and requested that nothing should be done to take away the liberty of the people to choose .between the two types of milk. The Minister had made it clear that that was not the issue and that there was no endeavour to force people to have pasteurised milk if they did not like it. WELLINGTON TESTS. Quoting figures for a year, Mr. Macfarlane said that 60,907 inspections were carried out by Health Department inspectors. Under the Wellington City Corporation method of control, however, there were 55,877 inspections. In Wellington the water content in milk was practically nil, but the results of the other inspections were truly amazing, which was proof of the efficiency of the Wellington system as compared with the rest of New Zealand

Mr. Macfarlane said that all the evidence was absolutely in favour of the Wellington system of milk supply and supported his statement by reading various .authoritative opinions and analysts' reports.

The. debate' was interrupted by the adjournment.