Use Of Timber For Crating Of Produce

Northern Advocate, 25 August 1945, Page 2

Use Of Timber For Crating Of Produce

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The Minister for Agriculture (Hon. B. Roberts), in the House of Representatives yesterday afternoon, said that timber equal to 2000 houses had been used for containers of primary products sent to the forces in the Pacific.

Mr Roberts said that while the Government would very much have liked to use that timber for housing, food had to be sent to the troops.

Mr W. Sullivan (Oppn., Bay of Plenty): But it was not building timber.

The Commissioner of State Forests (Hon. C. F. Skinner): Fifteen million feet of building timber goes into containers every year. Mr F. W. Doidge (Oppn., Tauranga): Why, when we have got pinus and tawa?

Mr Roberts said that members of the Opposition did not realise what was involved by war requirements. Mr W. J. Poison (Oppn., Sti'atford) said the Minister had made a most extraordinary statement. In a country so greatly in need of housing, 15,000,000 feet of building timber was being exported every year in the form of cases.

Mr Poison said he was a timber miller, and he said that that was a shocking and senseless waste of timber. Any reasonably managed mill would never use building timber for containers. Waste and ends, sap timber that would otherwise be wasted was used.

If building timber was being used it showed little discretion op the part of either the Minister for Agriculture or the Minister-in-Charge of Forests. Mr Poison said the Minister’s figures on dairy production were not only opposed to the Dairy Board’s figures but also to the figures of his own department. The Minister was suggesting that the few extra cows used for town supply had increased butterfat production by 10 per cent. Wool Piling Up

The Minister had boasted about the increase in sheep production at the expense of dairy production, at a time when 12,000,000 bales of * wool were piled up. In 1938 the value of wool exported from New Zealand was £12,000.000. Today it \sas £22,000,000, and the indifference of the Government to that state of affairs was not understandable. Europe needed wool, but was unable to pay for it, and British woollen mills were not buying stocks because of the present price. Woolgrowers should be told what future prospects were, but the Minister boasted of wool production while dairy production declined. Mr Poison, discussing the taking ever, of the Bank of New -Zealand, said many people who were normally opposed to monopolies were prepared to support a state monopoly of banking, of ci’edit and currency and their use. For Retaining Power It was a monopoly which, properly handled, might be suitable for this country, but as far as the Government was concerned, it was a method of retaining power—a sort of Huey Long method of keeping control and crushing the many private enterprises built up over a period of years. The Government’s proposal meant that something was being done under the guise of humanitarian legislation while the war gave an opportunity, but it was of a dangerous character, because, unless banking was handled entirely impersonally by a group of men who were officers with no axe to grind, the consequences would be serious.

Banking required to be carried out for the good of the State and for the benefit of the whole community by men who were specialists in their work. If it was handed over to politicians it would have serious effects cn the future of all of us, particularly of the next generation of New Zealanders.

The debate was interrupted at 1 o'clock.