“RED HERRING”

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22585, 13 March 1948, Page 5

“RED HERRING”

MINISTER’S ACTION FARMERS AND IMPORTS (P.A.) WELLINGTON, March 12. “Not only did I ‘purport to speak’— to use the Minister’s expression—on behalf of the action committee of the Federated Farmers, but I so spoke in reference to the 1948 import lists,” said Mr. R. G. Buckleton, chairman of the committee, replying today to comments by Mr. A. H. Nordmeyer.

Mr. Buckleton said the action committee operated under the instructions for the Dominion conference of the Federated Farmers and as the properly appointed and accredited chairman of the committee he was a co-opted member of the Dominion council of the organisation.

Referring to the Minister’s remark that farmers did not live by tractors alone, Mr. Buckleton said it had been made plain in his statement that farmers shared with other sections of the community from the general imports. “The Minister,” said Mr. Buckleton, “is merely drawing a red herring across the trail for his Government has taken the responsibility of having fostered a number of comparatively worthless secondary industries which consume large quantities of imported raw materials. They also absorb many workers who would be far better employed in essential and worth-while industries such as woollen mills.” Mr. Buckleton said the Minister ' ignored the point that the farming industry which produced almost the whole of New Zealand’s export income, was shorter of its basic requirements than any other industry in the country. Not Good Enough “The acting-Minister of Customs, in reply to our request for a detailed budget of the estimated income and expenditure covering New Zealand’s overseas exchange operations for 1948, correctly names the items for entry on both sides of the ledger, but he notably omits throughout to state the amount of money represented by each item, which is no help to anybody,’ said the president of the Associated Chambers of Commerce of New Zealand, Mr. Haskell Anderson. He added that until the Minister provided a properly drawn up statement in this connection they were getting nowhere. “It was not good enough for the Minister to airily claim that “the Government is the only body capable of deciding the extent to which licenses can be granted.”