Policies ‘inconsistent’

Press, 14 December 1985, Page 1

Policies ‘inconsistent’

Comments from fanners after addresses by the Minister of Finance, Mr Douglas, and the Minister of Agriculture, Mr Moyle, last evening showed an appreciation of what the Government was trying to do with its farm policies, but with reservations.

Mr Stuart Boag, a Rotheram farmer, said that the Government did need to “set things right” in the farming scene but that over-all Government policy was inconsistent. “The Government has a Right-wing fiscal policy and yet Left-wing labour and other policies,” he said. “Wages have increased an average of at least 15 per

cent and yet my lamb cheque this year has decreased 40 per cent. “Farming for me is pretty hard at the moment and with the 40 per cent drop in my lamb income I won’t be able to invest in productive items such as fertiliser.”

A Waiau farmer, Mr Bruce Gardner, said that although the Government’s farm policy was ultimately correct, in the meantime farmers still had to live on their farms. There was also a need to control wage increases better, he said.

An Oxford farmer, Mr Chris Sundstrum, said he was angry that previous

subsidies to farmers had been criticised by the Government when the main beneficiary of those subsidies was the manufacturing sector. “Yet manufacturing costs have soared and the farmers have had to bear the brunt of it,” he said. Another Oxford farmer, who asked not to be named, said that while the Government partly understood farming’s problems, it did not appreciate their gravity. “The Government says that one or two fanners are going down the road when it should really be talking about entire communities,” he said.