MEAT QUOTAS

Evening Star, Issue 23208, 6 March 1939, Page 2

MEAT QUOTAS

MR NASH ANSWERS MR COATES “ INACCURACIES AND HEROICS " [Special to the ‘ Stab.’] WELLINGTON, March 4. An assertion by the Rt. Hon. J.G. Coates, M.P. for Kaipara, that apathy and incapacity on the part of the Government had resulted in the infliction of a grave injury on New Zealand’s meat trade was replied to yesterday by the Minister of Marketing (the Hon. W. Nash). The Minister described Mr Coates’s statements as angry platitudes, inaccuracies, and heroics, and said that, notwithstanding Mr Coates, he did not think that party politics should or would disturb the pleasant relationship between, the Meat Producers’ Board and the Government. “Perhaps through a lapse of memory in quoting figures and alleged facts, Mr Coates, in professing to cover the history of meat quota negotiations, has published some unfortunate .distortions, even if he has not failed to do very ample justice to-the part he hiniself has always played,” Mr Nash said. “ For myself I have no wish to deny or belittle Mr Coates’s claims to credit. But ohe must correct at least some ofhis misstatements. - ■ • ’ “ New Zealand ■ remembers Mr, Coates as an. early advocate of quotas—most people will recall a, pamphlet bo issued as far back as 1933.■ More-than. • anybody . else, Mr Coates advocated--;New Zealand’s acceptance ofthe;'prinn ■ ciple of the quota. : ’He- himself at. Ottawa signed the - first formal.-agree-ment providing that the Dominion’s exports of mutton and lamb to- the United Kingdom would be held within a definitely fixed limit. He advocated butter and cheese quotas. Why does he now 1 whin himself into such a- fury?, “ Mr Coates’s first serious inaccuracy has to do with his own Ottawa arrangements. He alleges that. New, Zealand’s mutton and lamb allocation in the first year was 4,000,000 cwt, to be increased by 5 per cent, in each of the two succeeding years. The, published version of the agreement signed, by Mr Coates on August 20, 1932, binds New Zealand for the year, 1933 to mutton and lamb shipments not ex-: ceeding ‘ those of the 12 months ended June 30, 1932.’ This was 3,908,000 cwt If he cannot substantiate it, the least he can do is to withdraw so misleading an assertion. , , .. . “To illustrate the fact; that tlia. figures iu the letter were not allocations, may I quote as one -instance a. figure which he gave of not more than. 22,000 tons as his estimate of our. frozen beef exports? This figure .at that time was far short _of the Dominion’s requirements. In fact, compared with Mr'Coates s figure, the. United Kingdom Board _of Trade showed in its 1933 figures, imports of frozen beef from New Zealand of more than 35,000 tons! . . •. ~ “ Apart from window-dressing m ms letter, Mr Coates got for New Zealand precisely the same as Australia got. Does Mr Coates suggest—did he ever seriously suggest—that the Government undertook to give ~JMr Coates a 5 per cent, increase and gave no undertaking to Australia on like lines? He knows that the, policy waa. clearly to treat both countries .alike,, This is confirmed by Mr Coates s, state? meut to the House of Representatives, on October 13. 1932, on the Ottawa Agreement; ‘lt is manifestly air as between one Dominion and, another that., substantially similar conditions should apply to all, and the Ottawa Agreements satisfy this requirement. \V e are not to exceed the estimate given- “ Neither Australia nor.NeW Zealand received an allocation except that both of them for 1933 were ’held to their mutton and lamb for.tha 12 months period to June _30, n 193-5 that, as I have said, was 2,908,000 cwt in our case. ' “I have no wish to parade subsequent arrangements in which the Labour Government and, ,to some extent, I personally have been responsible. But I mention two points of fact. With the very valuable help of the Meat Producers’ Board, and its chairman, Duncan, find malinger, Mr Fraser, wvho accompanied me to London in 1936-3 i. and Mr Forsyth, who, as always, did excellent work—we obtained from tha British Government for 1938 a definite quota that allowed us to send 4,010.000 cwt of mutton and lamb.,:, “As events turned out, this was * figure well above our export requirements. But it stands as the record high figure ever granted to us, or eyer granted to any Government, Dominica or foreign.”