THE PRESS SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1986. Contradictory sheep quota

Press, 27 September 1986, Page 20

THE PRESS SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1986. Contradictory sheep quota

Interference with trade runs against the whole thrust of the Government’s economic policy. Protection from competition, especially when the protected industry is in a dominant position, runs against the sentiment of the Commerce Act. Denial of a chance to make the best earnings from a product on the export market hits at the best interests of the whole economy. In a striking contradiction of its general policy, the Government is supporting such interference with the farming industry.

Through its newly-created quango, the Live Sheep Export Committee — the famous quango-hunt being diverted on some false trail at the time — the Government is restricting farmers who wish to sell their own stock to one of the few markets prepared to pay well. The committee chairman, Mr Michael Connelly, has defended the committee’s decision, or rather the decision of three of the five members, to place a limit of 750,000 head on live sheep exports for 1986-87. Though the figure is too low to meet the demands of the buyers and sellers, the objection lies in imposing any quota at all.

The justification on which the Government relies for this interference is that the committee was created as a result of industrial confrontation on the export of live

sheep. Since then there has been no repetition of the picketing and confrontation that threatened to hold up shipments. This might be true enough. Perhaps the Government has bought a temporary peace; but it has bought this peace by itself confronting the traders. If picketing and confrontation threaten a lawful trade, picketing and confrontation should be the targets of Government action, not the trade itself.

The development of the live sheep trade has been clouded by peripheral issues, principally job protection for freezing workers and the health and comfort of the animals. These are matters of importance to freezing workers and to sheep and of legitimate interest to other groups with a special concern for the proper care of animals. They are not, and never should have been allowed to be an excuse for the Government’s strangling of a trade it claims to support.

Of course, the processing of our produce in New Zealand is desirable; but this should not deny meeting a market that wants live sheep and can determine the numbers it wants. Of course the animals should be treated as humanely as is possible in any trade; the quota is irrelevant to this if the live sheep trade is to be allowed at all.