FARMERS CONFERENCE

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4810, 14 July 1939, Page 5

FARMERS CONFERENCE

I HOSPITAL RATING BURDEN. USE OF MOTOR TAXATION. The burden of hospital rating on rural communities was discussed by the Farmers' Union conference and a remit was unanimously adopted as follows:—"That this conference urges that the present inequitable system of hospital rating, placing as it does an ever-increasing and unbearable burden of rates on the farming community without regard to ability to pay, should be abolished and the whole cost be met from the Social Security Fund." A remit was carried urging that the whole of motor taxation be spent proportionately on all roads in the Dominion, but that the present system of local body control be retained. The mover, Mr. H. E. Blyde, said that if they advocated total derating they would immediately have the opposition of automobile associations. The word "proportionately" was important, as they did not want all the money spent on main highways and nothing on by-ways.

Sale of Wool

The annual Dominion conference of the New Zealand Farmers' Union carried a remit to the effect that the executive be urged to press for a scheme covering the sale of wool, such scheme to give producers a measure of security against price fluctuation without loss of producer control.

Mr. A. J. Davey (Temuka) said that in moving about among farmers he had heard a good deal about the effect of heavy fluctuations in the price of wool. Whatever was said about the guaranteed price for dairy produce, and he did not intend to debate that, it had "bucked up" a proportion of the dairy farmers and enabled them to feel a certain measure of stability. The time had come for an attempt to be made to protect farmers against fluctuating prices for products. At the same time it was important to retain producer control in these days when the country was heading toward the socialisation of industry. Mr. G. C. Warren (Darfield), supporting the remit, said it- would be necessary to get the five main woolproducing countries into such a scheme. As an instance of what price stabilisation could do, he knew of one large suit-manufacturing firm in England which would buy 45,000 bales of wool a year if the price was stabilised.