WHEAT DUTIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 183, 4 August 1932, Page 5

WHEAT DUTIES.

NO REVIEW THIS YEAR. STRONG PROTEST MADE. ROYAL COMMISSION URGED. "IF GOVERNMENT NOT STRONG." The following letter has been forwarded to the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. G. W. Forbes, by the president of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, Mr. A. M. Seaman: —

"You are reported last week- to have stated that it is not your intention to review the wheat and allied duties this year. My council would respectfully submit that this decision is a wrong pne, and that notice should now be given of intention further to reduce the wheat duties from March 1, 1933. Our view is based on the following amongst other considerations: —

"(1) The present rate of duty is equivalent to some 70 per cent ad valorem, while the average rate on foodstuffs is less than 5 per cent (1932 Year Book, page 280). The yield of wheat lands per acre in New Zealand is some four times the Australian figure, andno protection should bo necessary in view of this great advantage the New Zealand farmer enjoys. So heavy a rate of duty on raw material for our main foodstuff unduly keeps up the cost of living, makes a revision of wage rates difficult, and so retards that reduction of productive costs which is so necessary to economic recovery. The wheat duties also unduly inflate land values in the grain district.?.

"(2) Wheat products have fallen in price by only 15 per cent since 1929, while the prices of exportable farm products generally have fallen 45 per cent. The wheat industry has received substantial concessions in rent and interest reductions since April, and substantial reductions in the cost of wheat production have ensued; but the wheat farmer is still permitted to charge the same price for his product as he charged before he received those concessions. "Thus the pastoral farmers aTe being ruined one by one while the wheat farmer is being maintained in a privileged position and some of the rank and file of our population are on the starvation line. The present temper of the community is not such as to tolerate the maintenance of privileged classes in our midst. "(3) Wheat duties also prejudice the pork and poultry industries, for whieh wheat is an important raw material. Under present conditions these industries cannot flourish without a subsidy; vet thev are potential export industries of "reat importance. The wheat duties are" in this way militating against the Government's avowed intentions to minimise unemployment by encouraging settlement on small holdings. "If the Government does not feel stron" enough to reduce there duties itself: and to defy the small hut noisy minority of by no means disinterested advocates of high wheat and flour duties, we suggest that it set up an entirely independent non-political royal commission to report on the subject.