THE POTATO EMBARGO.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 68, 17 February 1939, Page 6

THE POTATO EMBARGO.

With potatoes selling at between P 25 and £3O per ton in Sydney, though this extreme price has lately fallen somewhat, it is idle to suppose that growers in the Commonwealth would favour even the temporary lifting of the present embargo to help the people to obtain supplies at a fair rate. Nor have the demands made on the Federal Government elicited the slightest sympathy with particularly those people who are compelled to go without this article of diet. It has long since been evident that the embargo is political and not a means of keeping’ disease from the Australian growers’ fields. The Prime Minister of this Dominion declared his Government’s willingness to remove the embargo on New South Wales citrus fruits if the Commonwealth would show the slightest willingness to discuss the potato embargo. Mr Lyons, however, replied that the time was inopportune for New Zealand to express readiness of this nature because the Government had imposed drastic restrictions on Australian exports to this country. Air Savage was on sounder ground when he retorted that the import restriction policy is a recent development, whereas the embargoes are an old story. The embargo on New Zealand potatoes is very often an uncomfortable matter for the Federal Government, but in spite of trade negotiations between both Dominions nothing apparently can be done to remove it, and marketing organisations in Sydney are frequently speaking in condemnatory terms of it. Australia has a wide margin in her favour in the trade balance, but even this fact has no compelling influence. If the two countries are, in the Prime Alinister’s words, “to rise higher than potatoes and fruit,” there must be a considerable change of heart in Fell era! Government, circles. In the meantime the Australian public are again suffering because votes count for more than potatoes.