Task force too narrow — M.P.

Press, 7 June 1983, Page 6

Task force too narrow — M.P.

Parliamentary reporter

The special task force on the meat industry was sectionally too narrow, the National member of Parliament for Rangiora, Mr D. F. Quigley, has said. Although the task force, set up to explore ways of marketing meat competitively, had a wide enough brief, “leaving the solutions to the industry’s problems in the hands of those with narrow interests is obviously not going to work,” Mr Quigley told Taranaki Federated Farmers.

“It seems a little pointless to ask a group representing, just producers and the meat industry to adjudicate on their own performance and to come up with solutions to a problem which many say is now of crisis proportions. “Producer and industry representatives on their own cannot be expected to take account of the broader implications for the rest of the economy,” he said. It was important to co-opt.

A sensibly restructured meat industry would need to look at:

• The nonsense tying union demands for a $lO,OOO golden handshake for retiring workers, aged 60, with the introduction of new technology, “which is not even new.”

• Proliferation of employment awards and collective agreements committing employers to up to 16 different negotiations.

• Overmanning in the meat industry at a time of uncompetitiveness on the international market. The meat industry was a “super employment agency.” • The “ludicrous” arrangement of New Zealand farmers’ interests in Europe being looked after by the British Minister of Agriculture, who had British farming interests to represent. • Problems of access and voluntary restraint, and the status of New Zealand’s membership of the G.A.T.T. The Meat Industry needed to go back to square one

with its production processing, packing, shipping and marketing. It must urgently prepare medium and long-term market forecasts. Had it done this earlier it would not now be over-supplying markets, he said.

“I am appalled at the industry’s poor performance, lack of co-ordination and complete absence of long or short-term policy and direction.

The task force would need to look at the role of the Government, which might be the only agency capable of overcoming problems of fragmented works ownership and lack of co-ordina-tion in product distribution.

It would also need to examine everything from the farm to the market, both in New Zealand and overseas.

Critics of change said that the meat industry would “come right” with the international economic recovery, and that jobs should not be lost through restructuring at

a time of job shortages. But Japan had added three million’people to her labour force over the past few years at a time when other countries were suffering growing unemployment. “Japan achieved this because she concentrated on production efficiency, kept her wage rates competitive, and productivity high, took advantage of new production techniques, produced what the world market wanted, and sold hard in a particularly aggressive way.

“Her success was not achieved by being nice to her potential competitors or by asking them if they were prepared to let her sell her Eroducts on their markets,” e said.

Mr Quigley said that in the last seven years processing and delivery charges to free-on-board stage, had risen by 230 per cent compared with a consumer price index movement of 131 per cent for the same period.