Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 1935 COMMENTS ON THE NEWS

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 73, 27 March 1935, Page 6

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 1935 COMMENTS ON THE NEWS

A protest was made by Independent and Opposition members of the House of Representatives yesterday against giving urgency to the Committee stages of the Rural Mortgagors Final Adjustment Bill until important amendments were circulated. We can understand the position in which the Government is placed. It has been compelled by pressure within the Party and force of opinion outside to make radical changes in the Bill. At short notice it cannot remould' the measure so as to make it effective. In the meantime the session is dragging on and there is a desire for some appearance of progress. Yet we think that ■the protest was justified. With Part V still in nebulous form, how can the House offer an intelligent opinion on the measure as a whole? The aim of the Bill is the final adjustment of rural mortgages, and the House has been asked to discuss the whole Bill without having the final text of Part V which is headed "Final adjustment of the liabilities of mortgagors." There are important principles in other parts of the Bill; but they depend upon the main principle proposed for the final adjustment. Stay orders may be of little importance, and Courts of Review may have little to do if the end of the legislation is merely indefinite continuance of mortgagors protection. In fact, there can be no final adjustment without something to take the place of Part V, and the Government has not paid due respect to Parliament in insisting that it should approve a course without seeing the goal. ■■• —:>.-•

Because the House of Representatives had not the whole measure before it, yesterday's discussion upon the Rural.Mortgagors Final Adjustment Bill tended to be aimless. Yet, even so, some of the points discussed served to show the dangers towards which the Government is drifting. Mr. Downie Stewart questioned what effect the "productive" valuatidn method would have in relationship to valuing generally. The question cannot be ignored—Government and mortgage valuations were, before the depression, on a conservative scale. They were often much below the ideas of buyers and sellers. Yet they bore some relationship to selling values and they were uniform. We do not see how any fixed relationship can be maintained in future if the productive value is to have any stability. If it is not to be stable, but moving according to produce prices, how can it fairly be made the basis for debt adjustment? Again, the House spent some time in discussing efficiency. The Bill is intended to rehabilitate only efficient farmers, but no generally acceptable test of efficiency was submitted. Clearly there can be none, for the conditions must be taken into consideration. Success under favourable conditions'may be won by the inefficient farmer, while the capable man is fighting against hopeless odds. The decision must be left to commissions or a court out-side-Parliament and with no clear rules for their guidance. In matters of detail this delegation of responsibility may not be open to serious objection; but we maintain that when a revolutionary departure from commercial principles is proposed the Legislature should give its instructions definitely. If it cannot do so, it should recognise that the principle is one not to be lightly tampered with. . • • * While Dominions and Mother Country are still in the thick of the meat fight, the butter fight is almosL upon them—so close, indeed, that the Commonwealth Deputy Prime Minister, Dr. Earle Page, reminds Australia that her dairy producers will be facing a British restriction plan in November. His speech was in essence forecast by a Canberra message which drew attention to the expiry in a few months' time of Australia's right to a free market under the Ottawa agreement. The message added: "It is expected that after this date the British Government will propose a plan to protect the British industry and to give the rest of the market to the Dominions and Denmark, which is an important purchaser of British coal and manufactured goods." Supporters of the Elliot restriction policy will consider their case strengthened by the fact that, from July 1 up to a date late in February, Australia's export of butter to Britain showed an increase of 7807 tons, or nearly 12 per cent, as compared with the corresponding period of 1933-34. If shares in-the British butter market were based on existing supplies, Australia's share would be much' greater 6n, the 1934-35 figures than on figures averaged over five y<?ars or ten years. But the Austra-

lians' reply is an allegation that New Zealand's export of butter and lamb* is close to this country's peak of capacity; that Australia's export capacity could be doubled or trebled; wherefore Australia's share in the British meat and butter market should be based on a forward-looking (not a backward-looking) view of Empire development. The idea that New Zealand's lower tariff merits better treatment in the British market than Australia's higher tariff merits is a point to which Australian writers pay little attention.

A claim was made by the Municipal Association Conference for a new allocation of motor taxation, including 25 per cent, of the petrol tax to boroughs. Whether this is a fairer allocation than the 8 per cent, originally set aside for the larger boroughs we are not prepared to say. Certainly no convincing evidence has been produced that the present allocation is, reasonable. Road milage, as a basis for sharing the tax, favours the counties, but milage alone would produce striking anomalies. It would allow for maintenance of the country road, on which ten vehicles may pass in an hour, an amount as great as that allowed for the city road on which there are more than ten vehicles a minute. Clearly road milage should be modified by a factor which indicates the weight of traffic. This is, however, just one aspect of the greater question of transport coordination and road finance reform. If users are to pay for the roads (and that is the aim of derating advocates) they must pay for city as well as country roads; and the funds they provide must be distributed according to the use made of the highways. The Transport Coordination Board sliould first ascertain the facts and then submit a plan based ,on the facts. If there is delay in doing this important questions may be decided, as they have been before now, on political pressure. Eventually that is against the economic interests of the community. #• • *

Drought, dust, and depression are ! three Ds which have come all together in the United States. The chain of causation is easy to trace. Drought dries up the soil, and pro--1 motes the desiccation thereof. At the same time drought dries the herbage [ and grass, and makes it easy to burn. Evidence of this latter fact is seen in the widespread grass, scrub, and bush fires in Wellington district this .summer, when native evergreen '< vegetation that, in an ordinary summer, would be too green to carry fire, has gone up in smoke. Whether in New Zealand or in America, the trail of fire is seen in the track of drought, and thus the now-naked soil becomes more than ever liable to fall as landslips or to fly skyward as dust. When one reads of the American dust storms and the fear that large sections of the plains will become desert, one remembers that dust from Australian deserts falls even in New Zealand. the action of drought, combined with a depression which financially hampers the antidrought measures that the science of farming and forestry advises, great fertile areas might easily become a dust-heap. New Zealand deforestation, and American dust, are facts carrying a moral. Can we afford to ignore it?