Bay Criticism Of Fertiliser Meeting

Northern Advocate, 11 March 1948, Page 4

Bay Criticism Of Fertiliser Meeting

KAWAKAWA. Thu. (Sp.).—“l thought and still think it was largely a put-up job,” commented Cr C. F. Jones when reporting yesterday to the Bay of Islands County Council on the 1 ecent fertiliser works meeting held in Whangarei.

It seemed to him that there had been a clear intention to push through a resolution asking the Government to provide an import licence for £100!) worth of machinery to crush North African phosphate. If this were granted it would have been to an Auckland firm which was already settled on building its plant in Whangarei. Thus, lhe question of a site for a fertiliser works would have been automatically settled.

“It seemed to me a cunning move to gag all discussion on the question of site, and it was obvious that many delegates who were there kicked over the traces at the chairman’s repeated rulings,” he said. PERSONNEL MYSTERY Cr J. Hay, who had also attended the meeting, said he was worried about the personnel of the commission which was to be set up to inquire into site and other aspects. Its personnel appeared to have been known to some people, but not to others. He had himself failed to. find out who they were when he had openly asked for their names. “This commission, it was originally promised, should have representation from almost every interested organisation in Northland.” he said, “yet this council and many other bodies have never been invited to nominate a member to it.”

Cr G. H. McKenzie recalled that 25 years ago a freezing works was started at Reotahi, 20 miles from Whangarei. “but flopped.” It would be just the same with a fertiliser works there, since it could no more cater for the district north of Moerewa than could the freezing works.” TWO WILD STATEMENTS The county chairman (Cr H. T. Atkinson) said that two wild statements were made by seemingly responsible people at the meeting in Whangarei. One was that a fertiliser-crushing works in Northland would save £3 10/- a ton to the farmer, or a total of more than £ 100,000 annually. Yet there had been absolutely no figures produced to back up this,contention. He failed to see how the material might be cheaper if crushed by expensive New Zealand labour than by the cheap North African labour.

The second was that, if the works were started as a proprietary concern, they could be handed over to a cooperative management later. That, he declared, was physically impossible. If they proved profitable, no private company would surrender them; if they had to run at a loss, what cooperative interests could be induced to take over?