‘Rehabilitation for N.Z. farming needed’

Press, 14 November 1981, Page 12

‘Rehabilitation for N.Z. farming needed’

PA Gisborne A "kind of peace-time rehabilitation” for the farming industry has been promised by the Labour Party's leader (Mr Rowling). A 500 per cent increase in land settlement by genuine farmers was Labour's target, he told an audience of about 800 in Gisborne. He said people would remember well the rehabilitation programme after World War II when there was a “tremendous surge" in farm production.

“Young men. returning from overseas, gave their all to get this country going again." In a speech directed mainly at the rural voters. Mr Rowling said the main base of New Zealand’s development lay with the land — in agriculture and horticulture. “This is an area where we are not just good; we are the best in the world. We have got to stay the best in the world.

“We have got to keep that advantage. We have got to» seize those opportunities that lie ahead. If we are going to do that we have to boost that production on to an entirely new plateau.” Mr Rowling said.

“We have to drive hard with greater diversification at home. We have to have much more dedication in some areas of marketing abroad.”

Mr Rowling said the kind of money the National Government wanted to put into the Aramoana aluminium smelter was what was

needed to be invested in horticulture and agriculture in the Gisborne region.

“This is one area where the Labour Party and Federated Farmers are in absolute agreement. “We agree that if that kind of money was put into agriculture and horticulture in this country by the end of this decade our people on the land would be producing 15 times the value of the exports of any smelter, and they would provide on the land, and in the associated projects and support industries, 50 times the job opportunities for our people.” Mr Rowling said Labour's five-year development plan meant some $9OO million would be ploughed into horticulture and agriculture. However, the industry also heeded new blood, and Labour would ensure people with dedication, ability, and potential made it on to the land.

Farming needed people who would make it their way of life.

People with training and experience would be sought, "not people w ; ho know someone in Wellington."

On assistance to farmers. Mr Rowling said farmers would sooner have "a fair go" than a subsidy.

"But where there is no fair go there is not choice — either have subsidies or fail to survive.

"Indeed we have seen a great deal of that recently, and the great tragedy is that the Government’s manipulation of the supplementary price scheme means that many aspects of the farming industry have been put on a cost-plus basis. “It puts farmers in a position where what they are receiving bears no relation to the market place at all." Mr Rowling said: “The principles ,of that supplementary minimum price scheme are very sound. But nothing would destroy that principle and that scheme more quickly than manipulation by a government in an election year.

“No wonder they call it the rural seat retention scheme down in Wellington." Mr Rowling said the people had been placed in the situation where the market price for wool was 60c a kilogram or thereabouts below that which the Government had designated was the supplementary mimimum price.

However, he said to farmers that the price level had been declared and "because of the confidence factor there is no way we are going to interfere with that declared price." Mr Rowling also concentrated on regional development.

He said Mr Muldoon was "going off to get a partner for the Aramoana smelter by himself. The only thing is I don't think he will find one, and in any event I don’t think Mr Trotter and the Challenge Corporation are very interested at the moment.”