N.Z. asked to ease cheese exports

Press, 27 January 1979, Page 6

N.Z. asked to ease cheese exports

PA Wellington i New Zealand has been ! asked not to push its cheese sales »o hard in Australia at present in the hop? that it. will have an expanding marker in 10 years. The Victorian Minister of: Agriculture (Mr I. Smith) 1 put his case to the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) and the general manager of the. Dairy Board (Mr B. K. Knowles) on Thursday. He said that as the rep re-; sentative of a State in which! dairying was the main agritultural industry, he was) concerned about the increas-; jng flow of New Zealand! cheese to Australia. “While that is not harmful! at the moment because it is| a mature cheese, it will be; as our industry picks up the l slack of production,” hej said. j In six years as Minister, Mr Smith has built up dairy consumption in Victoria, through an advertising campaign run by the agency' which made Fosters beer the top foreign imported beer in the United States. Now other states, led by! New South Wales, are trying; similar sales campaigns for milk products At the same; t.me, production is falling throughout Australia, including Victoria, where the number of dairy farmers fell; 1500 last year. In the last three years.] exports of New Zealand'

11 cheese to Australia have] ! nearly tripled from 1371; .; tonnes in 1976 to 2400, tonnes in 1977 and 3600 ;i tonnes last year. This is still a small proportion of total Australian cheese consumption of i; 74.000 tonnes or its production of 112,000 tonnes. The increase has come ■ mainly from consumer demand for New Zealand flaivoured cheeses, all of which, except for Cheddar, have ilfree entry to Australia. Mr Smith’s concern is that • New Zealand sales are unipopular with farmers now I whereas in 10 years, if the 'fall in Australian cheese] I;production continues, there; ;[ will be plenty of room for! ■ iNew Zealand producers. I “So really the message is] lyou might by pushing your; .cheese a little bit hard at: 'the moment,” he said. j He agreed with New Zea-] J land that most Australian] states were wrongly subsi-l 'disir.g their dairy producers! ii instead of letting more ef-' ficient Victorian and New: (Zealand farmers supply, (them. ; "But that is not the nat-i lional view because national-; l|y the dairy industry is not; Jin the best hands,” he said. 1 • The Federal Agriculture Minister is Mr I. Sinclair,, (deputy leader of the Nat-1 fional Country Party. Mr . [Smith is a member of the. i'Liberal Party

As well as moving towards greater co-operation

[between New Zealand and Victoria in the Australian dairy market, Mr Smith has been trying to persuade New Zealand to cooperate in providing dairy technology to developing countries. He believes that a number of states are making competitive offers of agricultural technology to the Third World without making sure of a firm commitment to trade in exchange. Mr Smith has also inspected New Zealand’s under-used animal-quar-antine facilities at Somes Island and Silverstream to see whether Australia could save the expense of a planned big development of quarantine facilities by using New Zealands instead. “My own vice is that ithere is very little in the world genetic pool of cattle and sheep that can offer anything to your country,” .In- said.

He was generally sceptical of the need for quarantine

[stations at all although Aus- [ tralia might need them for (African cattle breeds.

; “I am sure that the people 'who advise governments to ! build costly guarantine fac- ; ilities really do not have a .grasp of the limited advantage you would get out of ijt,”' he said.