DUTIES ON WHEAT

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 266, 5 August 1932, Page 10

DUTIES ON WHEAT

Royal Commission Suggested AUCKLANDERS’ CRITICISM By Telegraph—Press Association. Auckland, August 4. , Following the Prime Minister’s reported statement that it is not the Government’s intention to review the wheat duties this year, the president of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, on behalf of the council, has written protesting against the decision. He says that the present rate of duty, equivalent to 70 per cent, ad valorem, keeps up the cost of living unduly, makes the revision of wage rates difficult, and so retards the reduction of productive costs. The yield of wheat lands per acre in New Zealand is some four times as great as the yield per acre in Australia, and no protection should be necessarv. Pastoral farmers are being ruined while the wheat farmer is being maintained in a privileged position and some of the rank and file of the population are on the starvation line. The present temper of the community is not such as to tolerate the maintenance of privileged classes. The letter concludes: “If the Government does not feel strong enough to reduce the duties itself and defy a small but noisy minority of by no means disinterested advocates of high wheat and flour duties, we suggest that it set up an entirely independent nonpolitical Royal Commission to report on the subject.”