Wheat and Flour Duties.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19132, 15 October 1927, Page 16

Wheat and Flour Duties.

After several changes of opinion the Government has finally settled its ; policy concerning the duties on imported -wheat and flour, and its proposals were agreed to in the House of Representatives yesterday. The duty on -wheat is to be Is 3d a bushel, rising or falling as the "current domestic " price " of foreign wheat falls or rises from a base-line of 5s 6d. The duty on flour is £3los a ton, falling or rising as the "current domestic price" of foreign flour rises or falls from a baseline of £l3 10s. This final alteration amounts to an increase of 2d in the duty on wheat as first proposed in the Bill and of 10s on flour. Mr Downie i Stewart's explanation of the policy of : the Government was agreeably clear, as one may admit without admitting that the policy itaelf is just right or even approximately right. The flat rate duty (2s a cental, on flour and £,3 a ton on wheat) is thought by the Government to be faulty because, when f (jKign are saij pisntjM

and cheap, the protection is insufficient for the grower of wheat, while when foreign wheat and flour are very dear the duty is hardly needed by the grower and the price of floor for the New Zealand consumer is made unpleasantly high. In the long run, as is obvious enough, these fluctuations would balance each other for all concerned, if there were no interference with the working of the market. But the Government has decided that it is best to make provision for the "stabilising" of the price of wheat and flour, and the prices it has selected are—freight apart—6s 7d for wheat and £l7 for flour. That is an intelligible policy, for which there is much to be said, and if the actual result is that when flour is £l7 the grower can get 6s 7d or something near it for his grain the country will have little reason for complaint. When account is had of the selfishness and stupidity of certain Northern interests—they do not grow wheat in the North—the farmers in our wheat-growing districts may be regarded as fortunate in receiving that measure of protection which the tariff gives them. 'At the very last moment a half-hearted proposal was 1 made, from the Labour benches, that the protection given to the wheat-grower should come by way of bonus. This plan was first suggested by Mr Geo. Gould in a letter to The Press in January of year, and is almost selfevidently the best that could be adopted, but the Dominion is so closely enmeshed in the snare of protection by tariffs that it will take it many years to get back to sound principles. Whether the growers will reap any real benefit from the "stabilising" slidingscale depends upon their capacity to look after iheir own interests in bargaining with the millers. Their representatives could have made a proposal to the Government which would have secured that the wheat-growing industry would really receive its full share of the protection provided. They could have asked that there should be superimposed upon the sliding-scale a provision that the duty on flour should be secondarily dependent upon the actual market price of New Zealand wheat, falling by 4s a ton for each penny by which the price of 'local wheat fell short of 6s 7d. This-would have guaranteed the reality of the relation between £l7 flour and 6s 7d wheat. That that should be the relation of prices is implicit in the new tariff plan, and if in the coming season the price of local wheat falls below 6s 7d the growers will have a strong case for ask- | ing for a revision which will give effect to the Government's avowed desire to maintain and encourage one of the most important of our national indus- [ tries. '