CUSTOMS TARIFF.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 205, 28 July 1928, Page 9

CUSTOMS TARIFF.

DUTY ON CEMENT. MINISTER REPLIES TO FARMERS’ UNION. WELLINGTON, July 28. A remit asking the Government to remove the duty of £1 on cement led. to an animated discussion at the annual conference of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union yesterday. The Minister of Customs (Hon. \\. D. Stewart) wrote as follows on the subject:— “I have to acknowledge receipt or your letter of June 28 with respect to certain questions concerning the Customs tariff. In reply, I have to inform you that the matters mentioned by you were fully gone into and discussed when the tariff was considered by Parliament last year. Your union will, I think, agree that it is not in tho interests of the trade of the Dominion that the tariff should be continually altered. Such a course would bring uncertainty into commercial transactions, and thus would interfere with the normal course of trade. “With respect to the duty on cement, your union is probably aware that there are about 600 persons engaged in tlie production of this article in the Dominion, and that if tlie duty were removed as requested by your union a considerable number of men would be thrown out of work, thus adding to the present difficulty concerning unemployment. So far as agricultural implements are concerned, it was represented to the Government that the' New Zealand manufacturers of agricultural implements had, in the past, rendered valuable assistance to New Zealand farmers in designing and supplying at reasonable prices implements specially suited for the development of the Dominion. I find also that the various branches of tho Farmers’ Union are not unanimous with respect to the duty on such implements. I have before mo a copy of a motion carried about the time the Customs Amendment Act, 1927, was passing through Parliament at a meeting of the executive of such a union to the effect that the ‘meeting is desirous of encouraging local industry with a reasonable duty but is opposed to a high protective tariff.’ I understand that similar action was taken by at least one of the important New Zealand Agricultural and Pastoral Associations. Information obtained about six months ago showed that the local prices of certain drills, cultivators, and disc harrows had been reduced from 12 to 30 per cent, since protection was granted, whereas the, price of the corresponding imported drill had been reduced 5 per cent., and the imported cultivators and disc harrows show no reduction in price at all. Not only so, but in regard to some agricultural implements the evidence showed that they were sold at lower prices under protection in Australia than in New Zealand, where they are admitted free of dutv.” Mr R. H. Feisst (Cambridge) said that tlie Minister’s reply was an insult to the intelligence of tho farmers of New Zealand.

Mr J. R. Dalton (Methven) said that the trouble with New Zealand manufacturers was that they were antiquated in their methods. He had seen a plough being removed from a factory to the railway behind a motor-lorry, with one man driving the lorry and. another man steering the plough. In America they would have a crane to lift the plough on to the lorry, and it would be whisked away in a few minutes. The people of New Zealand had to pay for the loss of time caused by antiquated methods. Captain F. Colbeck said that protection to the cement industry meant a bonus to each cement worker of £llO. Where was such a policy going to end? After further discussion, the conference deemed the Minister’s reply unsatisfactory.