The Press THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1940. Mr Nash and Marketing

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23177, 14 November 1940, Page 6

The Press THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1940. Mr Nash and Marketing

Addressing fruitgrowers at Hastings yesterday, the Minister for Marketing let fall a phrase which revives a question now a year old, never plainly answered by him, but the subject of several evasive statements. Mr Nash said that, while the Government might be able to pay a little more for fruit this season than last, it would be unable in the present abnormal circumstances to take costs into account; but, he added, after the war, “ if we act as marketing “ agents, as we hope to,” then costs will have to be considered in fixing prices. When the Marketing Act was amended on the outbreak of war, establishing the Governments commandeer rights over primary (and any other) products, the Minister stated in the House of Representatives that the Marketing Department was intended to hold these powers ” for all time.” Challenged there and then, he vainly denied that he had said so, and sought refuge in irrelevant assertions that his own “hopes and de- “ sires ” could settle nothing, that the legislation must “ eventually ” come under review, and that Parliament must have “ the final say.” These assertions were irrelevant, of course, because the ultimate authority of people and Parliament was not in question, but the intentions of the Minister, speaking for the Government. Later, when representatives of primary industry had protested against the use of a war •measure to impose permanent controls, Mr Nash continued his attempt to turn the question with assurances that the Government would “ let the House decide,” would “ bring “the war measures before Parliament” after the war, and so on. But he would never say that the Government regarded the Marketing Act as a war measure and no more than a war measure. He never denied that the measure embodied the Government’s final policy for the regulation of primary industry and that the Government would seek to retain it; but he would never acknowledge the policy distinctly, or the Government’s post-war intention with regard to it. However, Mr Nash’s “as we hope to,” at Hastings, is a candid disclosure which gives away no secret. Everybody knew what the Minister was up to. Everybody was able to penetrate the elaborate ambiguities and clever formulas with which he covered his original slip into plain sense, when he said “ for all “ time.” There is qp need to remind farmers that, if the Government remains in power after the war, it will remain their industrial master, and that Mr Savage’s promise to the meat and wool industries, that they would not be forced under the Primary Products Marketing Act, will be forgotten. But it is necessary to draw attention to this new example of the Minister’s methods. He exercised Tiis wits and tortured words for weeks to avoid making a plain statement. Now it pops out in four words. These are the methods which earned the Minister the no-confidence vote of the dairy conference.