F.O.L. attacks Mr Begg

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32660, 16 July 1971, Page 3

F.O.L. attacks Mr Begg

(N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, July 15. New Zealand was not a country of landed gentry and peasants, although the president of Federated Farmers (Mr A. C. Begg) spoke as if it was, said the president of the Federation of Labour (Mr T. E. Skinner), today. Mr Skinner was commenting on Mr Begg’s address to the farmers’ national conference this week, in which he said that wage increases were unreasonable, and that unions would exceed the guidelines if they were allowed to by the Government. Mr Skinner said: “Federated Farmers wants to peg other incomes, stifle domestic industry and live happily ever after on all their export income plus the substantial subsidies from the rest of the population. “This is the same general system that was in the Middle Ages in Europe, when the landlords had everything and the serfs nothing,” he said. “One must wonder at the audacity of a farmers’ leader who can in one breath advocate the holding down of wages for one section of the community, and in the next breath demand that these people provide subsides of sloom a year from taxes on their wages.”