BUTTER QUOTAS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 73, 28 March 1933, Page 6

BUTTER QUOTAS.

OUR ATTITUDE TO BRITAIN. ,(To the Editor.) Because Mr. W. Goodfellow, advisory director of the New Zealand Co-operative Dairy Company, .Ltd., is admittedly a high authority—if not the highest in the Dominion —on both production and marketing phases of the butter industry, his address to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce will be read vith wide interest. Referring to the Ottawa Conference, which he attended, he stated that "New Zealand had been slow in carrying out its part of the agreement. . . , By increasing the exchange rate without making a corresponding reduction in duties New Zealand f bad broken the agreement and placed a further disability of 15 per cent on British goods. . , . Suggestion of restriction on New Zealand dairy produce exports was caused, he was forced to conclude, by New Zealand's action-f----in raising the exchange." Mr. Goodfellow's refreshing candour in facing facts of the sorry position into which we have been forced k in striking contrast to the futilities uttered by Mr. Coates in. attempting to shield the Government from responsibility in the ruinous conscquences to farmers as to others of the high exchange madness. But when Mr. Goodfellow said, in opposition to butter quotas suggested by Britain, "it will be better to flglit the matter out," his position is not so clear. Admitting that the New Zealand Government has failed to carry out a portion of the Ottawa agreement and deliberately violated the other portion of it by raising the exchange, what beebmes of our sanctions for pressing for specific performance of Britain's part of the agreement? We cannot have it both ways. "Thrice armed is lie that hath his quarrel just." The" New Zealand Government being guilty of a gross violation of the Ottawa agreement, against which breach of faith the Mother Country is forced to protect herself, at which point is "the fight" suggested by Mr. Goodfellow to be directed? Obviously not against the Mother Country, but against the policy of our own Government and the actions that constitute the regrettable and flagrant wrong. How can New Zealand in this instance recover its national honour except by removing the iniquitous high exchange? A remission of, duties on specified imports from Britain will not fully compensate or adequately cover the situation, because high exchange affects all imports from, Britain, whether dutiable or non-dutiable. This is part, or illustrative, of the interminable tangle a Government gets into by stupid interference with the legitimate business of the citizens of the Dominion and the Empire.* Will Mr. Goodfellow help in "a light" for the restoration of the sanctity of agreements and contracts a/id the removal of the high exchange with its consequential crashing taxation and. charges and appalling drift in the nation's ■? finance? A. J. STALLWORTHY. .= '