Officials with ‘soft hands, hard heads’

Press, 6 July 1985, Page 1

Officials with ‘soft hands, hard heads’

By PATRICIA HERBERT in Wellington Sir Robert Muldoon yesterday charged the Reserve Bank and the Treasury with undermining the agricultural sector through policies born of “soft hands and hard heads.” »< He said the family farming tradition on which the New Zealand economy had been built was under threat as never before. It was under threat from “an essentially city-based Government” which had accepted “thoroughly bad advice from certain public servants whose experience was gained just a few short years ago in a university and who rarely venture out into the real world,” Sir Robert said. “They never get dirt on their boots and they never get callouses on their hands—soft hands and hard heads—and the damage they are doing between them to this country is immense and will be long-lasting.” Sir Robert said he had been appalled last year to read the Treasury’s advice to the Government on land use policy. “They had a simplistic approach—simple and

brutal. If you can’t make a go of it, get out and let someone who is more efficient have a go. “Never mind if you have lost all your equity. Land values are too high and must come down. Never mind if the cause of your trouble is two bad seasons in a row on your farm or two good seasons in a row overseas which have either cut your volume of output or your price. “On no account must the State give you any assistance to get over that bad time. That is contrary to the theory,” he said. “When we asked them about the economics on the processing side of the industry... they had not taken that into consideration,” Sir Robert said. “These are the people whose advice this Government has accepted. If the performance of some of them was judged by what they set out as their own theoretical standards, they would be out of a job but

their theory does not apply in the protected cocoon of the State services.” Sir Robert said that a year or two out of their classrooms, they wanted New Zealand to be the one country in the world where “we let everything run free and the devil take the hindmost.” Even some in the National Party caucus had been taking that line not very long ago and were now suffering from indigestion from having to eat so many of their own words, Sir Robert said. “It is my view, and it was the policy of my Government, that our traditional farming industries are vital to the future of the economy. We need that farm production.” He said the freeing-up of interest rates and the financial sector had been a disaster for agriculture because the farmer had to borrow both seasonally and longterm and was often heavily committed.