THE WHEAT DUTIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20870, 12 May 1931, Page 8

THE WHEAT DUTIES.

The proposals concerning wheat and flour duties, evolved by the Government and to be. submitted to Parliament, will satisfy none of the objections to the present scale and method. In the first place, there will be no change, until next February. Mr. Forbes says the Government has given an undertaking that there shall be no alteration in the duties until the crop harvested this year has been marketed. With what authority and by what right has the wheatgrower been given that guarantee, having regard to the shocks other primary producers have suffered, unannounced, from an unsheltered market, and to the reduction in return for their labours other members of the copimunity are being called upon to face 1 In effect, the wheatgrower is being promised the present artificial prices until next February, and after that a maximum reduction of Is 4d a bushel. Where else in the world is any producer, any worker of any description, being placed in a comparable position 1 More objectionable still, the sliding scale method is to be perpetuated by the Government's proposals. That the wheatgrower is entitled to reasonable protection has never been denied by the majority of those who attack the present height of the duties and the sliding scale by which they are regulated. That protection should be provided by the system that applies to other industry, either at a fixed rate or a fixed proportion, a specified duty or an ad valorem rate. Until that is established, there will be continued the wholly vicious process by which the wheatgrowers are placed in an unwarranted and privileged position at the direct expense of the whole community taxed on the most essential foodstuff in the whole dietary scale.