Pilots doubt plea success

Press, 12 July 1988, Page 17

Pilots doubt plea success

Top-dressing pilots doubt the Government will heed their plea for a short-term fertiliser subsidy.

The subsidy would encourage farmers to use fertiliser and could bring the top-dressing industry out of its crisis, said Mr Hallett Griffin, the chairman of the agricultural division of the Aviation Industry Association. However, he was not hopeful that the Minister of Agriculture, Mr Moyle, would agree to the subsidy.

“The present Government is not in favour of subsidising farming,” he said.

The division’s other suggestion to Mr Moyle — that the 11.2 c a litre tax on aviation fuel be abolished — might be more

favourably received by the Government, said Mr Griffen.

Something had to be done so that there was still a top-dressing industry left when the promised upturn in. farming finally arrived, he said.

The top-dressing fleet had dwindled from more than 200 aeroplanes in the mid-1980s to about 70 now. Only half of these worked full-time. Over the next three or four months those 70 pilots would have to decide whether to wait for the promised recovery or to sell their planes while prices were relatively good, said Mr Griffen. About 14 planes have been sold to Australians in the last two months, he said.