School-Milk Contracts Still Costing $840,000

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31461, 30 August 1967, Page 1

School-Milk Contracts Still Costing $840,000

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 29. The payment of $840,000 to milk suppliers for a milk-in-schools scheme that had been abolished was described as “utterly ridiculous” by Mr S. A. Whitehead (Lab., Nelson) in Parliament today.

“We oppose the abolition of the scheme,” said Mr Whitehead. “It is an utterly ridiculous situation to abolish the scheme and pay about half the usual amount to producers.”

He was speaking during the debate on the Estimates for the Department of Agriculture. The Prime Minister (Mi Holyoake) said the vote oi

$840,000 in this year’s estimates was not for milk in schools, but to cover the difference between town supply prices and the realisation from disposal to dairy farmers for milk purchased under * continuing contracts. Mr Whitehead: I feel it

would have been better for this money to have been spent on the original scheme. The country has not benefited from the loss of this scheme. Mr Taiboys said it was purely a matter of carrying out the contracts which the Government had with milk suppliers. Mr Whitehead: They don’t mind breaking a contract with the kiddies. The Leader of the Opposition (Mr Kirk) said it was going to cost $840,000 to end a scheme which had cost $1,820,000 a year. He asked if the estimate was based on the present townmilk price or the previous price as it had been reduced by one cent a gallon. Mr Holyoake said that elsewhere in the Estimates there

was a subsidy of $l2 million for milk available to everybody, including children. Tt would be unthinkable that we should break these contracts,” he said. Mr R. J. Tizard (Lab., Pakuranga) said that if the House was being asked to vote $840,000 for a no-milk-in-schools scheme then the Government's decision to abolish the scheme was hard to justify on economic grounds. “If the Government wanted to economise they should have phased out the scheme,” he said. Because the Government had contracted for certain town-milk supplies and now that some of the contracted milk was not going to schools, the Government had still to pay for the contracted delivery, he said.

“We have to pay the loss because the Government decided to abolish the scheme,” he said.