“NO IMMEDIATE EFFECT”

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26510, 27 August 1951, Page 6

“NO IMMEDIATE EFFECT”

LONDON COMMENT ON AUSTRALIAN ACTION (NJL. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, August 24. The rejection of the wool reserve price scheme by the Australian woolgrowers will have no immediate effect on either producers or consumers, British wool circles said in London.

The scheme was essentially longterm in nature and designed to become effective when wool prices reached a level far below those ruling at present. Some experts said that under the present and foreseeable conditions of supply and demand it might never have come into effect at all.

In Cape Town, Mr J. L. McHardy, managing director of the South African Wool Disposal Organisation, said that the Australian woolgrowers’ rejection of the new joint organisation for marketing wool would mean the end of such a body and its subsidiaries. It would also mean the end of the South African Wool Disposal Organisation, the liquidation of £5,000.u00 collected in levies from farmers, and a return to the pre-war marketing system of wool without a reserve price. Mr McHardy added that the Australian decision had come as a shock, though it was not unexpected by South African farmers, who had almost unanimously urged that the joint organisation should function. The repayment of £45,000,000 collected bv the Australian Government this season from woolgrowers as their contribution towards the establishment of the scheme is causing the Government concern. A spokesman said: “The inflationary effect which t!K repayment of this money will have is causing the Government many headaches.” Just before the referendum was taken on the wool stabilisation scheme, the Prime Minister (Mr Menzies) told woolgrowers that it was in their own interests and in the interest of the Australian economy to approve the plan.