Mr Fraser Tells Mr Holland Why Govt. Helped Growers

Grey River Argus, 8 November 1949, Page 5

Mr Fraser Tells Mr Holland Why Govt. Helped Growers

ROTORUA, November 5. Before the advent of the Labour Government, there had been thousands of unemployed, sometimes as few as 4000 or 5000, but they were always there, said the Prime Minister (Mr. Fraser) in an address last evening. In 192'7, a normal year, two out of seven timber workers, one in every six builders, and one in three seamen had been out of work, he said. Farm produce prices had been stabilised. yet some farmers had fought against their own freedom, said Mr. Fraser, just as there had been regiments of negroes fighting in the Confederate Army for slavery. Although Labour disliked resorting to borrowing, so urgent was the need for machinery to increase production and to break in the land that they were prepared to float a loan in the United Stats. One of Mr. Holland’s complaints was that £672,000 had been paid to the orchardists of the country by the Marketing Department, said Mr. Fraser, but that was at a time when there was no shipping available to carry fruit. Rather than see growers ruined, the Government had bought the crop at the market price. The fruit was then sold for what it could get or distributed free to schools and so on. That, insisted Mr. Fraser, was a legitimate war expense.