HELPING AN INDUSTRY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 38, 13 August 1941, Page 6

HELPING AN INDUSTRY

The Minister of Marketing has replied to criticism by the Otago Farmers' Union concerning the Government's meat purchase with a statement that really says if the farmers do not like it they can leave it. But this is not an effective reply, any more than the Minister's answer to Mr. Poison in Parliament met the actual points of criticism. The Government gave an undertaking to farmers that, if they produced, the Government would see them through. Now the Minister says that the undertaking was to buy the normal export surplus, and more than this has been taken. But was it made clear, emphatically clear, to farmers that, if their production exceeded the normal quantity available for export, the excess would be at their own risk? Whatever may have been the letter of the undertaking there can be no doubt that the spirit of it was that if the farmers did the producing the Government would see them safely through the marketing. In good faith the farmers did their work and the country would not wish any section of them to feel that they have not received what they were led to expect. This question must not be confused, as the Minister has at times confused it, with the question of peacetime guaranteed prices. "If it had not been for a Labour Government there would have been a slump in the meat industry and in the country," the Minister stated in the House. This is not correct. No Government, Labour or National, could have allowed a basic industry to stand unprotected against a warcreated emergency. The circumstances called for support from the country in the same way that support has been given to the fruit industry. It is wholly misleading to link this with a policy of marketing control in peacetime. When trading conditions are normal it is much open to argument, whether marketing should be socialised and made a Government monopoly. We ourselves are emphatically of opinion that the haggling and political fighting over the dairy produce guaranteed price showed that this was an unwise system. But the disposal of the produce in time of war when bulk purchase and Government control of | shipping were in operation, was on | a completely different footing. Then ithe Government guarantee and purchase became, not socialistic, but a rational method of meeting emergency • conditions.