The Press SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1947. Ill-Gotten Grain

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25306, 4 October 1947, Page 8

The Press SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1947. Ill-Gotten Grain

• Australian critics have not been slow ■ to notice in Mr Chifley’s Budget the i appropriation of £2,000,000 to cover i the difference between the price received from the New Zealand Government under the wheat contract ! and the price paid out to farmers : under the Australian wheat price agreement. This £2,000,000 is of course only an instalment; over the full period the contract may cost the Australian taxpayers four times as much. The critics say, fairly enough, first that there is not the slightest reason why Australian taxpayers should subsidise New Zealand’s bread and second that when New Zealand was tenderly guaranteed wheat at 5s 9d Britain was paying 9s 6d at ports and last year paid 14s 6d. The first point does not sting very sharply in New Zealand. No doubt the Australian Government—though it did not consult the Australian Wheat Boarti, which was merely “ informed thoqght it had fairly reckoned and balanced longterm chances of up and down in export wheat prices. The New Zealand Government might, on Canberra figuring, be paying 2s more than export parity by 1948; and a bargain is a bargain, whether its edge turns this way or that. But the second point touches a sore place—sorer to-day than when the Government’s wheat policy was decided and the contract negotiated, because Britain’s bread has since been rationed, other British rations have been cut, and the cuts may go deeper yet. New Zealand has bought bread away from Britain, is eating now what might be Britain’s bread, and has for four years, assured itself of the bread that is daily and wantonly wasted here and is anxiously measured out in Britain. That is why more New Zealanders to-day are sensitive to the truth about their wheat bargain; but it was a bargain to be ashamed of as soon as it was known. The Government accepted the flimsiest evidence that the world’s food shortage was passing. Before its decision was announced, the evidence was already discredited. The decision was to give up the effort to grow all the wheat that could be grown and draw on world supply. It looked like a rash, selfish decision then; it is damned as a rash, selfish decision now. The Government had no right to bargain against the risks of world shortage for New Zealand’s cheap plenty. Then, and since then, it could and should have declared an emergency wheat price which would have maximised New Zealand acreage and minimised New Zealand imports, or even dispensed with imports. Such a policy could have been supported by other measures to make sure of its full success. Instead, the Government played the part of a haggler; and its haggling has had sorry results. New Zealand has bread to burn, bread to bury, as every honest observer will admit; and less than half of it now is the product of New Zealand acres. These are the acreage figures of the last five seasons: 000 1942- .. .. 287 1943- 234 1944- .. .. 184 1945- .. 161 1946- .. .. 140 And a short time ago the Aid-to-Britain conference called for a sudden lift of the 1947-48 acreage to 200,000, and of the next season’s to 250,000. These aims may be reached or may not; this is not the occasion when that is to be argued. But it should be understood by everybody in New Zealand that in the cry for a great effort to reach them, and in the facts that make the cry pitifully urgent, the Government’s policy is corldemned and its bargain shamed.