FARMERS INSULATED

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 46, 23 August 1938, Page 10

FARMERS INSULATED

MR. FRASER'S CLAIM

THE GUARANTEED

PRICE

WHEN BAD TIMES COME

The? claim that the Government had already insulated the dairy farmers against; the effects of a depression was made by the Minister of Health (the Hon. P. Fraser), when speaking at Roseneath last evening. *

Mr. Fraser said that today, with the guaranteed price, the farmer was better off than ever before, and was in the position of having a secure income.

"We have protected the dairy farmers of the Dominion against a fall in overseas prices," he said. "The guaranteed price method has been so successful, that although there may be arguments here and there among farmers whether the price is high enough or whether there should be a co—. ■..matory price, there is not any farmer./ meeting in the whole of the dominion which wouldI'vote to go back J to the previous anarchic system. There is general acknowledgment that the policy of the guaranteed price that has given stability in the homes of the j farmers is a permanent feature of our j economic life." He pointed out that the farmers had benefited from a higher and more stable income on the one hand, and from a readjustment of their financial liabilities on the other. There was a fundamental difference between-' the outlook of the Labour Party and that of their Nationalist opponents, the Minister said. "We believe in helping the people in their homes, and when bad times come, all the powers of Government and Parliament will bs used to protect the standard of living of the people." NO PERSONALITIES. The Minister said that he desired that the election campaign should not be a personal wrangle, because the issues were. much too . big for personalities. The best conception of the Nationalist outlook could be obtained from what the party did ,during the; depression. The Nationalists believed that a cutting-down policy was the best, and those who voted for the Nationalists would be voting for a policy of cutting down. Labour adopted a different view. If all prices fell on the world's markets at once it would be comparatively simple for '|d Government, because they would be selling their goods at the same value as they would be buying goods back. In practice, agricultural goods fell in price first, and prices for industrial goods came down with a considerable lag, and it was between those. >two periods that the Labour Party would have to protect the people. Instead of going to the help of the primary producer in the last depression, the then Government cut down the incomes of everybody else. Mr. Fraser reviewed the accomplishments of the Labour Government, and remarked that the Government had, achieved a great deal more than he, personally,- thought it would have been able to accomplish. At the conclusion of his address, a vote of thanks and confidence was carried unanimously. "