Dairy Board chairman on the attack

Press, 9 March 1982, Page 22

Dairy Board chairman on the attack

PA Wellington The chairman of the Dairy Board (Mr K. Mehrtens) yesterday attacked Australian dairy interests, saying they speak a lot of nonsense about how they will be affected by closer economic relations (CER) with New Zealand. “The amount of noise which comes out of some of our Australian friends is really in inverse proportions to the amount of business we are doing in Australia,” he told the board’s opening ward conference in Matamata. “They suggest that New Zealand is about to be thrown out of the European Community and, . reeling from the shock, would plunge

headlong into the Australian market. That is of course a lot of nonsense, quite apart from the fact that it would be impracticable,” he said. Mr Mehrtens said there is no reason to suspect that New Zealand will be totally excluded from the EEC — to whom it now sells about 90,000 tonnes of butter a year. “Even more importantly,” he said, “after three decades of effort and application we have diversified our markets world-wide to broaden the base of our security; and having achieved this, there is no way that we will abandon this security and revert to reliance on a single market — even if the Australian

. market could absorb our export production, which it cannot.” Mr Mehrtens said the board has been careful about the scale and nature of its business with Australia, and the country now takes about 1 per cent of total exports. He said the Australian dairy industry should be focusing its attention on rescuing its domestic market before pricing policies make it an endangered species. “They have already seen the butter market reduced by half in the past 10 years and if something positive is not done, the same is likely to happen with the other products. In the interests of our producers and theirs, this ‘ should not happen since its effects will not be confined to the domestic market but will also have a depressing effect on the export returns of both our industries.”