‘Tough talking’ on dairy prices

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33520, 29 April 1974, Page 3

‘Tough talking’ on dairy prices

(N.Z.P.A. Staff Correspondent)

LONDON, April 28.

The Leader of the Opposition (Mr Marshall) will confront Britain’s Labour Prime Minister (Mr Wilson) with some tough talking in support of higher New Zealand dairy export prices tomorrow.

“I know Mr Wilson well enough to talk straight to him,” Mr Marshall said today.' “New Zealand must put on the pressure if it is to get justice.”

Mr Marshall, who fully backs the New Zealand Government’s claim for a 15 per cent rise in butter and cheese prices, said he was concerned about the attitude

of British Government Ministers at talks in London on Friday. He told the N.Z.P.A. that the British seemed unwilling to pay the $ 14.5 m a year the rise would cost, though they conceded the logic of New Zealand’s case. He also said that the British seemed to have decided that New Zealand’s case should be combined with their own campaign to renegotiate the terms of their Common Market membership. This indicated a long delay, perhaps as much as two years, Mr Marshall said, during which New Zealand would sell its dairy goods to Britain at a loss.

He said he was sending notes of his interviews on Friday to the Government in Wellington, to enable it to intensify the fight for an immediate increase for New Zealand dairy farmers. On Friday, Mr Marshall saw the Minister of Agriculture- (Mr Fred Peart) and two men with key roles in the E.E.C. re-negotiations — the Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Roy Hattersley) and the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Trade (Mr Eric Deakins). The three, in separate interviews, presented the same argument, indicating that the British Cabinet had discussed the New Zealand

question, and wanted to delay a decision. “It is important that this matter not be allowed to drift”, Mr Marshall said. “We must maintain constant pressure.” Mr Marshall said the British Ministers conceded that the Commonwealth could no longer provide for Britain an alternative, in the trading sense, to the Common Market.

But they all said the Labour Government wanted to place greater emphasis on Commonwealth relations, and to promote greater Commonwealth activity and co-operation.

BACKING FOR N.Z. On Friday Mr George! Thomson, one of Britain’s two E.E.C. commissioners, told the British Government that the age of cheap food is over. He publicly backed New Zealand’s bid for higher dairy prices. New Zealand had a very strong case for a substantial increase in its butter price, Mr Thomson said, in a major speech to the Royal Commonwealth Society. He called on the Government — of which he is a member — to ensure that the safeguards for New Zealand in Britain’s E.E.C. entry terms were, “fully and properly observed.”

The initial reaction of political correspondents in London was that Mr Thomson’s speech could spark another row in the British Labour Party he used to serve as a Cabinet Minister.

“The great reservoirs of cheap New Zealand dairy products, of cheap Canadian wheat, of cheap Caribbean sugar, or cheap Australian tinned goods ready to flood into our supermarkets, but blocked by the dam of Community food taxes, are a modern myth,” Mr Thomson said. Countries such as New Zealand, Canada, and Australia would not bind themselves to artificially low prices if they could get considerably more on the world market.