NO REASON FOR EXEMPTION

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 95, 23 April 1931, Page 10

NO REASON FOR EXEMPTION

In the two reporls presented to the House of Representatives on flour and bread prices and in the speeches of members there was nothing which could be accepted as justifying the retention of the existing scales of duties on wheat and flour. The baker's margin of profit and the allowance made for delivery are not matters calling for Parliamentary intervention in the same measure. There is competition in baking and in the delivery of bread, and if one baker attempts to squeeze too great a profit he runs the risk of losing his business. But the. sliding scales of duty on wheat and flour place the wheat-grower and the miller in a more favoured position. Unless they grow and produce so much that there is internal competition there pan be no competitive reduction in price, because the lower the price of foreign wheat and flour may fall the higher is the duty. Internal competition is not working freely. When there was a surplus of wheat it was shipped overseas at prices much below those ruling on the internal market. Growers did not give the public the benefit of bountiful production. It is die sliding scales of duly that are primarily responsible for this stale of affairs. Whether the lax on the public be great or small, it 'is not just and equitable. Producers in other lines, manufacturers, merchants, and workers in all classes are being compelled to bear their share of the present depression. There is no reason whatever for keeping wheal-growers and millers in a specially protected class, exempt from the effects of ihc deflation movement. Moreover, a Government and a Parliament that have given approval to a wage-reduc-tion policy and urged that this should be accompanied by price reductions will stultify themselves if they now declare that one class of producers shall not,be .subject to reductions and the price of one important foodstuff shall be maintained, by Government action, at its old level.