QUOTA OPPOSED

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 19, 22 July 1933, Page 13

QUOTA OPPOSED

DISASTROUS EFFECT

MR. FULTON'S CONVICTION

Opposition to any restriction on the export of New Zoalaud dairy produce into Great Britain was expressed by Mr. Dynes Fulton, acting-chairman of the New Zealand Dairy Produce Board, in addressing a meeting of one hundred and . lifty dairy factory representatives in Now Plymouth on Wednesday. "The introduction of a quota," he said, "would be nothing short of a disaster to this country" (reports the "Turanaki Herald"). 'An important: man in the New Zealand dairy industry, stated Mr. Fulton, lifid recently advised farmers to "go slow" on their production. hi the speaker's opinion, he hud asked some-

thing which was impossible, and wind;, if carried out, would bo fraught with gi-avo consequences not only to the New Zealand dairying industry but to the whole of the Dominion.

Every year thousands of boys were leaving school and thero was no opportunity for them in business or professional .life. From the ranks of business and professional men thousands had been already forced oh to thy unemployed. But there were in this country hundreds of thousands of acres suitable for development into good dairying land; thero was opportunity for closer settlement and more intensive farming. It was on the land that the youth of the Dominion must bo cm(ployed and it was by dairying and other primary industries that the couni try would prosper.

SEVERAL EEASONS AGAINST.

Ono dreaded to think, therefore, what would happen if restrictions were imposed. • It was, to say tho least of it, most unwise for anyone to' tell the farmer to "slow up," because it could not be done. There were several good reasons why the export of Now Zealand's dairy produce to England should not be restricted. If a restriction wcro imposed on New Zealand dairy produce it would make it absolutely impossible for this Dominion to meet its obligations to tho Mother Country. Now Zealand had the future of its young people to look to. It was the duty of everyone to leave conditions better than he found them. So the presont policy of progress must still be pursued. This country had helped Great Britain in the Great War. Empire stability must be maintained and, if it came to the point, Great Britain must renounce her foreign producers and stand by her own people first.

BRITISH FARMERS' POSITION.

In tho present agitation for a quota much was made of the hardship of the British farmer, Mr. Fulton continued, but the British farmer produced annually 45,000 tons of butter and a relatively small proportion of the country's cheese requirements. The cry of helping the British farmer was overdone, and he believed that there was something more behind Major Elliot's (the British Minister of Agriculture) advocacy of quotas than appeared oa the surface. This Dominion had stood behind the Mother Country in the Great War. Had they been able to get a penny more our present foreign produce competitors on the English markets would have had no hesitation in supplying our enemies. England should support New Zealaud as New Zealand had supported her. At the same times, added Mr. Fulton, New Zealand must buy from Great Britain what we ourselves could not produce—and those manufactures mu3t come into this country free. He was sure that if the Prime Minister ; at present in London, put the position to tho British--Cabinet there would be uo moro talk of imposing a quota on New Zealand produce. However, concluded Mr. Fulton, if England, abiding by the terms of tho Ottawa Agreement, did not insist _<m a quota but threw the. responsibility on New Zealand itself, then the affair was one for the New- Zealand Government to decide, since it would affect tho whole well-being and prosperity of this Dominion. -