Wheat and Flour Duties

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 266, 5 August 1932, Page 13

Wheat and Flour Duties

Sir,—Your leading article of July 28 regarding the, as you aptly term it, "stranglehold” Parliament allows the New Zealand wheatgrowers to maintain in regard to the price of wheat and flour, by reason of the outrageous protective duties, is one which should appeal to every consumer of bread, and also the poultry and pig-raiser, etc. If this matter is not going to be taken up at the present juncture by chambers of commerce, and the vast number of users of wheat and offals (and their numbers must be legion), the wheatgrowere and their inseparable friends the flourmillers will see another season come along and these two concerns again unduly protected to the detriment of everyone else in New Zealand. Now is the time to smite the spoon-fed wheat farmer and the over-indulged flourmiller hip and thigh. Parliament appears to bo blind to everyone else’s interests but the two circles referred to. This unwarranted high protective tariff is not only inimical to the interest of several other producers in the Dominion but our Government are also entirely >and totally blind to the fact that they are keeping down the price of land which could bo utilised by a great number of poultry and pig-farmersj benefiting themselves and advancing the interests of the Dominion as a whole and also curtailing further taxation. Your article well covers ths whole question, and compares what other countries are doing. If there has ever been so blatant an absence of ordinary common sense to the advancement of New Zealand, and a Government manifestly so devoid of a sense of what is best not only for the Dominion but the householder and the helping of sundry industries, and ultimately our exports, I should like anyone to come forward and point it out The Department of Industries and Commerce has endeavoured to justify its enormous importation of wheat from Australia at certainly very high money, and has apparently entered into some arrangement with the flourmillers, but are not, it would appear, on sufficiently safe ground to make the prices open to the public, and yet it is public property what prices have been fixed for some years past each season for New Zealand milling wheat. Then again, the Department of Industries and Commerce for some reason elect to appoint an Australian to do the buying of the Australian cargoes of wheat, when this could well have been done by a New Zealand broker which would have meant keeping the commission paid in the Dominion, and yet we have the same department asking everyone in New Zealand to buy Dominionmanufactured goods. The Hon. R. Masters also talks about a high price having been paid for “hard” wheat; anyone in the trade knows that “f.a.q.” milling on the Australian Government certificate of quality has for many years past, when millers in New Zealand have been able to import wheat themselves direct, met al! requirements; furthermore, “hard” wheat is not an expression used in connection with Australian wheat, but applies to Canadian and American wheat. Has the department been astray in its purchase?—l am, etc., REASONABLE. Wellington, July 30.