AUSTRALIANS READY FOR WOOL VOTE

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30901, 6 November 1965, Page 15

AUSTRALIANS READY FOR WOOL VOTE

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright) CANBERRA, Nov. 5. Australian wool growers tomorrow begin voting on whether their industry should adopt a reserve price plan.

The proposal envisages an authority similar to the New Zealand Wool Commission. To establish the fund wool growers would provide £3om by levy on wool grown over a period of years. Trading banks would provide £som credit and the Government would guarantee to provide any finance required in excess of £Bom.

The plan has led to bitter controversy among growers with nation-wide campaigning for and against it.

Today, every wool grower received a ballot paper which must, under penalty of fine, be returned by December 9. Growers are obliged to vote if they shore more than 10 bales of wool in 1964-65 or if they have continuously owned at least 300 sheep since September 16.

Every ballot paper has gone out accompanied by official summaries of the case “for” and “against” the wool plan. The “for” case claims that the plan would give Australian growers a greater overall return and greater price stability. It says this stability would give the world wool textile trade confidence in the continuing use of wool. It also claims that the plan provided a .marketing system which would strengthen auctions and made an effective distributing system for- wool. The “no” case claims the plan would burden growers with costly speculative experiment.

It claims this might imperil the use of wool as a popular fibre, jeopardise growers’ ability to continue to finance vigorous and worth-while research and promotion programmes and might not even return to the grower the cost

of financing the scheme. More than 8000 growers will take part in the postal vote.

The advocate of the scheme, the Australian Wool Board, has organised a “vote yes” committee, and has imported the managing director of the International Wool Secretariat, Mr W. J. Vines, and the chairman of the New Zealand Wool Board, Mr J Acland, to plead its cause. The two will join forces with the chairman of the Australian Wool Board, Sir William Gunn, and will travel in rural areas of Australia speaking in favour of the scheme. At the request of the Aus-

tralian Wool Board, Mr Acland made a rushed trip from New Zealand yesterday. He began promoting the plan at his airport news conference.