TAGS ON GUARANTEES

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 127, 3 June 1929, Page 8

TAGS ON GUARANTEES

In Britain Liberals may presently have the chance of giving orders from outside the fence, and of giving them ("not .in a haggling spirit") to Labour (if not to Conservatism). But in New Zealand the position is reversed, Labour being prospectively the outside boss, along with Reform; while it is the party nearest to British Liberalism (the Ward Party) that sits in office here. And evidence is already growing that Labour will enjoy twisting the tail of the lion in New Zealand, just as much as British Labour will resent (if in office) any undue tail-twisting in Britain. Circumstances certainly alter cases. One matter in which the Weslland Timber Workers' Union is trying to tie ; the Government in a knot is the fruitgrowers' demand that timber imported for fruit cases shall be treated better than other imported timber, or shall continue to be admitted if other timber imports are barred. As the Union sees it, the Government's guarantee of about 11s per case on exported apples and pears is morally contingent on the use by the fruitgrowers of Dominion - produced materials; therefore, the unionist motto is "no New Zealand timber in the case, no guarantee on the fruit." In line with that argument, the Government is asked by the Union "to limit the guarantee to fruit that is packed in cases made of New Zealand timber."

One of the points made on the Union side is that the Consolidated Fund finds the money when the fruit exporters make a loss, and carries the risk all the time, wherefore New Zealand timber workers, not outsiders, should share in the benefits of a trade that is so fostered from a Fund representing the general revenue of the country, including taxation. It is one of the things in which employers will be almost certain to chime with employees—that is, so far as the timber trade is concerned. But even that measure of idealism does not mean harmony, because the fruitgrowers will certainly object. Their objection will be that a guarantee, ,to be effective, cannot be a conditional affair, or at any rate cannot be contingent on a limitation of the.right jo buy in the best market. If an industry, the credit of which is buttressed by a guarantee, must buy New Zealand timber, is not the argument equally sound that an industry in receipt of continuous benefit from a protective Customs duty should also be : bound, to use New Zealand articles where such are procurable? And, if that is conceded, it is only a step to say that everything round the fruit, including the nails or the wire, must be of local origin or manufacture; and it is only another step to say that^the guaranteed person or the protected person must wear New Zealand boots and use personally only Dominion wares of all sorts. By the time the lion's tail has been twisted to that point, his tears or his roars will have become audible.