AID FOR FARMERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 271, 15 November 1935, Page 10

AID FOR FARMERS.

GUARANTEED PRICES.

DEFENCE BY MR. SAVAGE.

EXCHANGE ALTERNATIVE.

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.) HASTINGS, Thursday. The leader of the Parliamentary Labour party, Mr. M. J. Savage, addressed a crowded meeting in the Assembly Hall to-night. Referring to guaranteed prices, Mr. Savage said that the opponents of Labour were doing their best to misrepresent the position by stating that such prices could only be paid out of increased taxation. Nothing was further from the truth. Exporters were already receiving a subsidy from the high rate of exchange, which was an indirect tax levied upon the people of New Zealand, rich and poor. The amount raised annually and paid to exporters through the present rate of exchange was not less than £10,000,000, said Mr. Savage, if the same amount of money were raised in another way and paid to the same people without raising the -rate of exchange, it was difficult to see how taxation would be increased. Guaranteed prices would be an alternative to the present method and would cost no more. A high rate of exchange gave the greatest benefit to the exporter when it was least needed, and did not prevent violent fluctuations in the incomes of the farmers, while guaranteed prices would assist the farmers most when prices were low and would prevent anything in the nature of violent fluctuations in their incomes. Exchange reductions would necessarily be arranged in easy stages/ ■ If returned to power at the coming election the Labour party would immediately commence to readjust mortgages on a basis of the average of prices ruling during the past eight or ten years, with price guarantees on that basis, and would prevent any undue attempts at foreclosure during the intervening period. At vote of thanks to Mr. Savage and confidence in the Labour party was carried.