P.M. Disappoints Mr. Mulholland

Northern Advocate, 21 July 1939, Page 6

P.M. Disappoints Mr. Mulholland

[Special to “Northern Advocate ”] CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. The president of the Farmers’ Union, Mr W. W. Mulholland, said yesterday that because he assumed that the Prime Minister, Mr Savage; meant what he said, Mr Savage had' “loosed off a whole column of print at me, the general tenor of which seems to be a retraction of hfs Parliamentary statement.”

Mr Mulholland was commenting on the guaranteed price question, and said that, shorn of its irrelevancies, Mr Savage’s Press statement seemed to boil down to two points—that the dairy farmer is this year getting £2,000,000 more than his produce will realise on the overseas markets, and that Mr Savage desires to khow whether the dairy farmers want the guaranteed price or—what?

“With regard to the £2,000,000 more than the market realisation which the Prime Minister says the dairy farmers will receive this year, this is a debit against them in the Dairy Account, which will be reduced by the £500,000 surplus from last year,” Mr Mulholland said.

“The balance remaining is a charge against the realisation of future years. It is an advance which has to be repaid, but the Government, by converting sterling receipts for dairy produce into New Zealand currency at much below its real value, has deprived the Dairy Industry Account, and consequently the farmers, of more than £2.000,000 this year, and by this means the industry has been compelled to pay a subsidy ,of this amount to the rest of the community.

After discussing the need for taking changed circumstances into account, Mr Mulholland went on to say “My ‘cool assumption’ was that Mr Savage knew these things and was talking seriously. The last sentence in Mr Savage’s press statement suggests that he has no intention of taking any action. and his desire ‘to know from the farmers if they would prefer the scrapping of that policy’ becomes purely an academic question, and it is a question that cannot usefully be discussed on an academic basis,” Mr Mulholland added. “I am sure, however, that if the Prime Minister desires to make any cl tnges, the leaders of the industry would be veiw willing to meet him in C'„ nference and assist him to take such action as would be in the best interests of everyone.”