THE TWO PRICES POLICY

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 128, 1 June 1934, Page 6

THE TWO PRICES POLICY

An Australian who recently visited New Zealand, Mr. Paul Haege, stated recently, ■on his return to Sydney, that in New Zealand

considerable interest was being taken in the Commonwealth dairy produce equalisation sclieme, and he considered it extremely probable that some similar course would be adopted by New Zealanders in the near future.

The Paterson Plan and its legalised successor, the butter stabilisation plan, have relied on Australian butter being sold dearly at home in order to be sold cheaply abroad; and this is the plan that Mr. Haege predicts for New Zealand. But, at about the same time as he made his statement, another statement was being made by the Federal PostmasterGeneral, Mr. Parkhill, who recently visited Britain, and who heard there "bitter complaints against the action of Australian primary producers accepting a high Australian price for their goods and then offering them at a much lower competitive price in England." It surely stands to reason that Britain's post-Ottawa policy in the matter of dairy produce will not ignore the difference between an exporter who has legislatively raised his^home price and an exporter who (as Mr. J. H. Thomas recently remarked concerning New Zealand) claims to base his home price on export parity. The high-exchange imposition is common to both Dominion and Commonwealth, but the home price cap which Mr. Haege is fitting on New Zealand's head'is one that the Dominion has not hitherto worn. ... Whatever cash benefit there might be in the manipulation of the home price of butter would come too Mate, and its adoption at this late stage would destroy the moral value of New Zealand's considered refusal 'to follow the Paterson lead of years ago.