MEAT SUPPORT PRICES

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27614, 22 March 1955, Page 12

MEAT SUPPORT PRICES

Cabinet Discussion This Week MINISTER REPLIES TO MR ORMOND (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, March 21. The Cabinet is to consider this week the meat support price proposals submitted on behalf of the industry by the New Zealand Meat Producers’ Board, and subsequent consideration of the scheme is to be given by a caucus of the Government party. The Minister of Agriculture (Mr K. J. Holyoake) announced this tonight. The Minister, replying to a statement made by the chairman of the board (Mr John Ormond) at Auckland last night, said: “Mr Ormond, in a characteristic manner, has once more made a misleading statement as he steps aboard a plane for other lands. Mr Ormond knows very well that I have been concerned over the delay in arriving at a conclusion on support prices, as he and other interested parties have been. Mr Ormond’s statement implies that the Government has been holding up the matter, but he is well aware that this is not correct.

“It has been apparent for some time that producers themselves, or at least their representatives, have been unable to co-ordinate their own thinking, and the determination of their own differences in broad principles only, was achieved only on February 21.

“I am aware of the restiveness among individual meat producers,” continued Mr Holyoake. “and I have from time to time discussed the matter with Mr Ormond and inquired whether I could do anything to help him to speed up the arrangements. “Representatives of producer organisations have at all times had access to me and to the departmental officers on the committee, and it was only on February 21 that I received a summary of the broad principles agreed to by producer representatives. ’I made a special case of seeing Mr Ormond personally during his last visit to Wellington, and then informed him that ' the proposals submitted to me would be considered by the Cabinet this week and subsequently by a meeting of the caucus in order that finality might be expedited. “That undertaking will be carried out, and the New Zealand Meat Producers’ Board will be informed at the earliest possible date of the decision regarding the broad principles enunciated by producers,” the Minister said.

He added that Mr Ormond’s statement was not helpful to the Government or to the producers themselves in arriving at a proper decision on “this very difficult problem.”