N.Z. Potato ‘Hot' For Australia

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30106, 15 April 1963, Page 10

N.Z. Potato ‘Hot' For Australia

<N.Z. Press Assoctatum-Copyngnt) MELBOURNE, April 14. The committee investigating limited free trade between Australia and New Zealand was likely to find the New Zeeland pdtato still, politically, a very hot one in Australia, the “Melbourne Herald’s” Canberra correspondent said yesterday.

"The 30-year-old wrangle on whether Australia should abandon an even older import embargo by allowing New Zealand potatoes on the Australian market is highlighted by the decision to work for a free trade area and by the plan to appoint a committee to try to streamline plant and animal quarantine between the two countries," he said. Diseased The correspondent continued: “Officially. the Federal Government still maintains that New Zealand potatoes are diseased and cannot be admitted-to Australia without real danger to the potato crop. They are supposed to be carriers of corky scab. “Many experts say the disease is rife in Australia, that is was here before the ban operated, and that the quarantine serves no bonafide quarantine purpose. “But there’s no doubt it does reserve the whole of our market to Australian-grown potatoes. .‘This is a fact that has constantly soured our trade relations with New Zealand.” The correspondent said: “Recurring potato famines

when- local crops failed had sent the price soaring, and over the years had been a big factor In the basic wage increase. Abolishing the embargo would be a big factor in stabilising potato supplies and and prices. •The background seems to be set at last for a sensible reappraisal of a silly and. unnecessary embargo," he said. “But politically, it's probably still true that removing the embargo on New Zealand potatoes will be restricted by rural interests as strongly as would be proposals for free trade in dairy products or sheep meat, both of which are expressly excluded from any dealing.”