N.Z. Wool Support Price Scheme Praised

Press, Volume C, Issue 29503, 3 May 1961, Page 6

N.Z. Wool Support Price Scheme Praised

fH Z Prett Association—copiment)

BRISBANE, May 2. If Australia had been as successful as New Zealand under its wool auction scheme, Australia would have received £AI3O million more for its clip last year, a Queensland wool authority said last night. He is Mr Alan Walter Campbell, founder and managing director of Queensland’s biggest wool-selling broking firm Queensland Primary Producers’ Co-opera-tive Association, Limited. He and the president of United Graziers’ Association. Mr C. B. Peter Bell, have told the wool marketing inquiry committee that a reserve price scheme within the auction system was essential for the Australian wool industry. Mr Bell suggested an £BO million reserve price scheme, £32m of which would be financed by growers paying a three per cent, levy over three years, the Commonwealth Government contributing £Bm and the trading banks granting a £4om overdraft secured on wool stocks and the revolving fund of growers* contributions. Mr Campbell said this floor price scheme, in essence, was a continuation of the wartime Joint Organisation scheme.

“which was the most prosperous and most successful we have ever had." “If Australia had been as successful as New Zealand was under its scheme, it would have got £l3om more for its clip last year," he said. The Inquiry chairman, Mr Justice Sir Roslyn Philp, said growers seemed to have taken it as a certainty that the Government would finance the scheme. “I am not by any means certain,” he said. “The Commonwealth Government had the power in 1951, but does it have it now? We would be grateful if anyone could show us the best way and a practical way of financing it.” Mr Bell said the unnecessarily severe price fluctuations could he abated by a minimum reserve price scheme within the auction system.

“Primarily its function Is to put a floor in the market by the establishment each season of a reserve price,, below which prices could not fall," he said. Mr Bell added that the minimum reserve price would be fixed by a grower-con-trolled authority on the basis of export opinion. It might be low when the scheme

started, but it gradually would be lifted, as had happened under the New Zealand and South African schemes.