THOSE DAIRY REGULATIONS

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 590, 15 December 1908, Page 8

THOSE DAIRY REGULATIONS

MR RUTHERFORD'S TESTIMONY. Mr A. W. Rutherford, ex-M.P., a wealthy farmer, and a prominent member of the Opposition in the late Parliament, wries aa follows to the Lyttelton Times:— "It seems to me that Mr McNab has been most unjustly treated by a section of his political opponents in connection with the dairy regulations. The facts are that the dairy industry had grown to such a magnitude that the existing regulations required material amendment. The Department of Agriculture approved and took the matter in hand. New regulations were drafted on lines suggested by that department, and in due course weie presented to the House. Mr McNab, following a usual course, moved that they be referred to the Agricultural, Pastoral and Stock Committee. It was the function of that committee, not Mr McNab, to revise the regulations. A mass of evidence was given before the committee by representatives from the principal dairying districts. The evidence furnished by these representatives and dairymen was carefully sifted, and when the regulations were in course of revision Mr McNab accepted all reasonable amendments. "I was a member of the Agricultural, Pastoral and Stock Committee, as was Mr Okey, the member for Taranaki, the principal dairy district within the Dominion. On the completion of the committee's work, I asked Mr Okey what he thought of it. He replied 'to the effect, that he was satisfied it was all right. Mr Okey is a practical farmer, a man who has run his own dairy and milked his own cows, and he is a member of Mr Massey's party. Well, if he is contented, there cannot be much wrong with the regulations.

"It has been said that the dairy regulations, with some assistance from the suggested Meikle grant of £5000, caused the defeat of Mr McNab. If so he suffered from what was no fault of his. It followed as the obvious corollary to the judicial inquiry that as some money should be placed on the estimates the amount rested with the Government, and the sum voted, with the House. Knowing something of the position I prefer to think Mr McNab's attitude on the freehold versus leasehold question contributed more to his defeat than the dairy regulations or the Meikle grant. The ethics of political welfare might justify the combatants in making the most heinous of lying charges against the enemy, but surely when peace is proclaimed we should, one and all, ascend to the realms of truth. Therefore let justice be done to Mr McNab.''