COSTS & CONSEQUENCES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 80, 1 October 1938, Page 8

COSTS & CONSEQUENCES

■_ . ■♦ • It is highly improbable that dairy fanners will derive much satisfaction from the assurance of the Prime Minister, given at Dunedin, that they are better off today1 than they have ever been. The farmers will decide for themselyes whether they are, in fact, better off today than ever before, and- the treatment they have received under the Government's guaranteed price plan will be one of the main factors to be taken into consideration in reaching a conclusion. No words of Mr. Savage can. alter plain facts. There can be no escape from the plain fact that the Government has balked at giving to the farmers the price to which the Special Advisory Committee unanimously considered them to be entitled if they were to receive a just reward for their labours. The Committee held that the claim of the industry for a price that would fully compensate them for increased production costs had been substantiated to the full, but the Government, apparently realising for the first time the cost involved in the guaranteed price scheme, ignored the recommendation of the Committee, based on tlie Government's formula, and fixed a price that would lessen the prospective deficit. In view of that fact, the dairy farmers are not likely to accept Mr. Savage's estimate of their circumstances, but rather they are likely to say that they are not nearly as well off as they are entitled to be. It would be surprising if the dairy farmers showed any real enthusiasm for a Government which, by its policy, keeps up their costs but at the same time keeps down the price which it has promised should suffice to cover those costs. In the same speech Mr. Savage said that the farmers "were not going to lose anything by reason of the fact that the price of locallyconsumed, produce was not increased Avhen the guaranteed price was fixed." Does this mean that the retail price for butter on the local market is to be raised? If it does, and it is difficult to see what else it can mean, the consuming public is faced with yet another advance in the ! cost of living. Mr. Savage say's that the interests of the producers are to be carefully protected, but this will not bring much comfort to the consumers. How are their interests to be protected?