The Press. Friday, July 4, 1930. The Wheat Duties.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19971, 4 July 1930, Page 12

The Press. Friday, July 4, 1930. The Wheat Duties.

It is possible that the new attack on the wheat and flour duties, reported in The Press yesterday morning, need not be taken very seriously. If its weight were simply that of the statements made by the one or two members of Parliament who delivered it, it would deserve little or no notice; but there are several reasons why any agitation against the duties is dangerous. If a North Island politician shrills against u a handful of wheat-growers " to-day, the North Island Press will fume and threaten to-morrow, as the whole history of the wheat problem shows. The North Island newspapers have never tired of denouncing the Canterbury farmer and complaining that people pay more for their bread to keep him selfishly safe. This is a travesty of fact, and as such has been exposed again and again; but a travesty will do to hammer a weak Government with, and this is what is to be feared or at least to be carefully watched. The Reform Government was strong enough and long-sighted enough to consider and cherish an industry of high national importance, disregarding the short-sighted objections of politicians and interests and districts eager to sacrifice it for a few pence. But the United Government cannot be depended on to show a similar firmness, if it is assailed in the same way and at the same time pushed on to surrender by the Labour Party. Indeed, the United Government began its curious history with a curious fuss about the duties being too high and the farmer getting too mneh for his wheat; and though the result of this fuss was the Wheat Industry Committee's recommendation that the scale of duties should Btand, nobody has any real ground for believing that the Government eould not be flurried i«*o up its former attitude again. The Party in Office has the same sympathies and hostilities still, it is still exposed to the same pressure, and it has still to prove that it possesses courage enough and principle enough to fall rather than fail in its national duty. All that Mr Forbes said on Tuesday was that, the 1931 crop being now sown, the Government does not think any alteration should be made " until "after the end of next year." If this was intended to hint that, while the Government could not at once knock down the duties, it sympathised with | the protests against " a serious tax on " the community generally and on the " poorer sections in particular," then it gave countenance to a mischievous and unfair suggestion. The suggestion is that the poor are' denied " cheap food " that M a handful of farmers" may .flourish; and this is a very unpleasant mixture of cant and falsity. The duties neither appreciably raise the cost of bread, which is in any ease one of the cheapest of foods anfl one of the least considerable items in any household budget, nor make the wheatgrower wealthy. What they do is to keep going an industry which would otherwise dwindle and perhaps perish and which the country eannot afford to endanger, any more than it eould afford to poison all its sheep. They maintain also the whole structure of Canterbury's industry and commerce, as was shown once and for all in the report prepared for the Chamber of Commerce by the Economies Department of Canterbury College early in 1925. This is always true, and it is a truth which affects the rest of the Dominion, whether this is recognised or not, as vitally as it does Canterbury; but it is true in a special sense to-day. In present conditions, -with wool prices down and lamb and mutton priceß down as low as they are, wheat means more to Canterbury farmers and the whole population of the province than it has meant for years. If wheat goes, Canterbury collapses. That is the hard fact, and Mr Forbes must stand by it without budging.

The City Council Vacancy. All that the Citizens' Association need ask itself when it meets to-night ia whether it can find a candidate strong enough to beat Mr G. R. Hunter. It is merely a waste o£ time, and an affront to the electors, to ask whether the vacant seat " belongs" to one of the Parties, and whether it could not be filled by arrangement. It belongs to the electors of Christchnrch and not to this or tbut section of them, and unless they are all willing to have it filled by the nominee of Labour, an election is the normal and only proper procedure. It is of course to be deplored that the Council has fallen into the party system of Government, bat it would not help it out of that difficulty to engage in party bargaining. In any case the situation to-day is quite different from that which existed when the Council was first elected. It was made quite clear in April last, when a very strong Labour candidate was defeated by more than 3000 votes, that the electors had changed their minds about the Labour Party's control of the Council; and equally clear after the election that Labour had not changed its mind on the subject of party government. An effort was made to allow the business of the Council to be conducted on non-party lines, bnt instead of co-operating with the other momberti, the Labour Councillors withdrew, petulantly and childishly, into What they were pleased to call Opposition. Even if they had now abandoned this pew it would 1m unjust lio

the electors generally to refuse them an opportunity of Baying how they wish the vacancy to be filled.