Honey Marketing Authority under strong attack

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32460, 21 November 1970, Page 22

Honey Marketing Authority under strong attack

(N.Z. Press Association) ROTORUA, Nov. 20. The refusal of the New Zealand Honey Marketing Authority to allow bulk exports of honey, and its allowing only limited exports of lines packed in retail containers, came under strong attack in Rotorua this week. The president of the New Zealand Honey Packer’s Association (Mr W. L. Holt) taxed the authority with “complete inefficiency.”. The authority, he said, was flooding the New Zealand market with honey and not exporting the surplus. Exporting of New Zealand money was the purpose of the authority’s existence. His association had demanded an investigation into the whole New Zealand honey-marketing system. A recent conference of the New Zealand Beekeepers’

Association passed remits asking the Minister of Agriculture (Mr Carter) to authorise the setting-up of a committee to investigate the functions of the authority. The beekeepers recommended that licences be issued to private packers and producers to export unlimited quantities of bulk and packed honey. Mr Holt indicated that the packers’ and keepers’ associations were very much in line in their thinking and that the Minister was anxious to clear up the authority situation as quickly as possible. A “seals levy” had been intended to apply to all! honey sold in New Zealand; by all private producers. It! was set to pay for promo-: tion of honey both in New Zealand and overseas. How-i ever, said Mr Holt, because the authority was unable to collect the level from “backdoor sales” of honey, retailtrade packers were the only ones paying it. “The levy is, therefore,

i only being applied to about • one quarter of total produc- ■ tion. It' is not equitable. One i section of the industry is : being penalised,” said Mr Holt. His association had proposed to the Bee- : keepers’ Association that . . the levy be applied on a production basis and administered by the association instead of the authority. The proposal had been sent to the Minister. In the meantime, the Honey Packers’ Association members agreed not to pay the levy because they felt the money was being misused, Mr Holt said. Because of his own refusal to pay the devy, he had received a demand from the authority, ’through its lawyers, for .$7532. The authority had ’threatened to wind up his (Company in three weeks unless he paid the amount |or made some arrangement (for payment satisfactory to ’the authority. Mr Holt said he contacted the Minister to ask whether the authority’s action had been approved by him. He was told that Government legal advisers were of the opinion that he (the Minister) could not interfere because the authority was a statutory body set up by Act of Parliament. “This,” said Mr Holt, “is at variance with an opinion obtained from a Queen’s Counsel two years ago, in j which it was said that the authority was responsible to the Minister of Agriculture.” “I consider,” said Mr Holt, “that an investigating com- ’ mittee should be set up with haste, and that serious consideration should be given to winding up the Honey Marketing Authority as a I trading concern, with the isale of its assets to private packers or companies. : “This would result in an | increase in efficiency, a better return to the producers, and a lower price to the consumer," Mr Holt said.