Economic Cannibalism

Grey River Argus, 18 November 1946, Page 2

Economic Cannibalism

Mr Holland is very solicitous for mothers and fathers.- Again and again he has repeated his interest in fostering home life, and it seems that his way of achieving this is to have “a lot of little capitalsts” with freedom and independence and all the other mumbo-jumbo labels of Toryism to spur them on to economic cannibalism.

Take, for instance, his attitude on the subject of milk. He declared it was the National Party’s policy to let everybody have the sort of milk they lived. In other words, his approach to the subject of public health was that of a barbarian. “We say if it is your money it is yours to do what you like with,” said Mr Holland. Yes, he would be willing to allow all to purchase the sort of milk they liked —pasteurised or raw—and from whatever vendors they preferred. Does Mr'Holland forget the evidence given to the Milk Commission concerning a street in his own city of Christchurch —that in one street, one and a-quarter miles long, there were no fewer than 26 milkmen delivering, and at least half the milk delivered by the vendors was 24 hours’ old? Does he overlook also other evidence contained irt| the Commission’s report? “A man suffering from a virulent skin diseasp was handling milk.

“A vendor who claims to deliver only T.B, tested milk draws only a-third of his supply from a T.B. tested herd.”

“One large vendor told the Commission that he only used his bottle steriliser during an epidemic.” Mr Holland would like to see women purchasing their milk without any controls. He would let them take the risk of choosing a vendor who sold milk from T.B. infected cows, or a man who only sterilised his bottles when there was an epidemic scare, or a man who might introduce a virulent skin disease in homes where there were young children.

The Labour Government’s Milk Act, 1944, provided for the first time the necessary machinery for the organisation of the supply of milk on..a Dominion-wide basis, following the Royal Commission’s recommendations: — I

(a) Creating a central authority to ensure the even development and organisation of the liquid milk industry. , . (b) Setting up local authorities for the provision of adequate supply of high quality in each of the main consuming centres. (c) Organising producers in co-operative organisations. (d) Securing a fair economic return to the town milk suppliers. The steps taken did not increase consumer prices, but it stabilised them.

A number of minor epidemics were traced to a faulty milk supply by the Royal Commission, and the Health Department was greatly concerned about this and also advocated the proper organisation and control of the industry.

All this—all these safeguards—all these provisions carefully thought out in the interest of public health will be swept away by a Tory Government led 1 by Mr Holland. He has said so.

Mr. Holland paraded his sympathy for the mothers of the nation in their trials and promised to relieve them of their burden. He said this with one breath; with his next he demonstrated the crookedness of his thinking when he promised his capitalistic friends the sort of freedom that capitalism grows corpulent upon.