More freedom needed, says meat president

Press, 27 March 1979, Page 3

More freedom needed, says meat president

Bureaucrats as a strangling influence on free enterprise came under fire yesterday from the president of the Meat Retailers’ Federation (Mr B. R. Shackel). They were one of several targets in his address to the forty-sixth national convention of the federation, being held in the Christchurch Town Hall. “There needs to be a change towards more freedom for the individual,” he said. “The catch with that is that with freedom must come more responsibility.”

If New Zealanders wanted to live better in New Zealand they had to work for it, he told delegates to the three-day convention. The private sector could no longer support the health, education and welfare programmes, he said. “We have tended over recent years to hand the entire responsibility for these areas over to the Government while we sat back and watched excellent community organisations struggling

to survive for want of support.”

Examples were private and Karitane hospitals and independent schools, where much voluntary and low-cost labour management had been available. Farmers were also caned by Mr Shackel for involvement in politics and lobbies and their ambition to get into processing and industry. “If their skills lie in farming, that is where I believe they should direct them,” he said. New Zealand has been unable to export pork profitably in any quantity and its quality was “well below” world standards, he said. This was partly the fault of pig farmers, partly through restrictive grading standards, and partly because the present law forbade the production of an uncastrated male pig for sale in the form of joints and cuts.

“I believe that pig producers are being penalised by their own body, the Pork In-

dustry Council, to the tune of $1.50 a pig as a levy. It is quite ridiculous that much of this money that the pig producer is paying is being wasted,” said Mr Shackel. “The industry would be better to spend its funds on the development of large and more efficient units and forcing some common sense on bureaucrats who, by legislation, are preventing the production of the best quality male pig,” he said. Referring to politicians, Mr Shackel said that those in New Zealand had more integrity, on average, than in almost any other country in the world, but they were still politicians and many things they would like to do were not expedient. “So much rubbish has come out of our Parliament in recent years in the way of legislation, that it is hard for most of us to believe that many of our members of Parliament have this apparently rare commodity,” he said. An example was the Accident Compensation Act, which gave no incentive to the employer who successfully took precautions to reduce accidents. Similarly, the Human Rights legislation, while noble in principle, had missed the point in many ways.

“Bullying” by some militant trade unions also came under fire, as did weak management which did not lead. “Most people would agree that we cannot continue to see small groups like the crews of the Wellington-Pic-ton ferry holding the rest of the country to ransom. I am confident that this view would be held by 95 per cent of trade unionists in this country,” said Mr Shackel.

The Government could shut the ferries down, pay off the existing crews, and lease the ferries to private

contractors. “I am prepared to estimate that we might reduce the cost of running these ferries by as much as 75 per cent,” he said. “Freezing workers are another group who are frequently in the news and there is a great deal of misunderstanding about them and the job they do. It would do no harm for the freezing companies themselves, as a public relations exercise, to open their works up to more frequent visits by members of the public. “Not so many people would like the job that many freezing workers have to do in the slaughter and processing of stock. They deserve to be well-paid,” said Mr Shackel. “However, in many areas their demands appear to have been excesssive and weak management in many instances has agreed to rales of pay and conditions of employment that are quite unnecessary. Freezing industry management has as much to answer for as the unions for the problems they have experienced.”