RELIEF FOR DAIRY FARMERS.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 222, 18 September 1919, Page 2

RELIEF FOR DAIRY FARMERS.

THE EQUALIS-STION FUND. (By Telegraph.—Special to "Star."*) WELLINGTON, Wednesday. Further opportunity was taken by members from dairying districts to-day to urge on the Government a settlement of the butter producers' claim for compensation owing to the operation of __8 equalisation fund last session, penalising them for the benefit of the community, which thus got cheap butter.

Mr. Massey admitted that butter-pro-ducers were not fairly used compared with wheat growers, but now, he said, they were in a better position tha_i wheat growers. Mr. "fc"itty: They can export butter, but wheat growers have nothing to export. Mr. Massey continued that butter producers would get the export value for their butter sold in the loeali market a* for last season. A number of petitions which had been presented would coma before a Parliamentary Committee. Ha (I i.l not propose to go any further until the Committee reported, and, as a sum of £150.000 to £170,000 was involved, it was a matter for the whole Cabinet. The Government wanted to treat butter producers fairly, and he would like to remind them that last season's arrangement was made when he was in England. .Mr. McCombs differed from the Premier's estimate of the cost of recouping butter producers. He estimated it, on the of the previous equalisation fund, at £200,000. Butter producers got ■15 per cent advance on pre-war prices, while coal kings, by no means so hard worked, obtained 55 per cent advance. In view of what the Government had done in connection with wheat and flour, the most equitable arrangement, concluded Mr. McCombs, would be to provide for butter producers retrospective payments out of the consolidated reV-