LABOUR'S WHEAT POLICY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21470, 19 April 1933, Page 10

LABOUR'S WHEAT POLICY

In supporting the wheat duties the Labour Party was well aware that it would have difficulty in justifying its action to its supporters in every constituency outside Canterbury and North Otago. But at all costs it had to guard its Southern strongholds, where 1 lie interests of its people arc regarding as being in line with those of the wheatgrowers. The political wheat confederation is one of the most remarkable in the history of New Zealand. All Canterbury members of Parliament stand shoulder to shoulder on this issue, and their success means the exploitation of every other quarter of the country. At the annual conference, therefore, the party lias been at great pains to skate over the very thin political ice in its way. It elaborates a plan that is nothing less than the nationalisation of the industry complete with State flour mills and all the other essentials by which it will control wheat from the field to the table of the consumer. There ;ire to be guaranteed prices to the farmer, guaranteed wages to all workers, and so on, the whole crazy structure resting upon the "solid foundations" of-monetary reform. And while the conference propounds these theories with a faith in the efficiency of State control that is as great as its distrust in private enterprise, the community continues to pay an exorbitant price for its bread because, for

reasons best known to the Government and the Labour Party, the wheat industry, alono among ~ the primary industries, must be protected from the economic blast. IE one forgets the political aspect of this plan, it seems so very typical of Labour's remedies for wrongs It cannot face things as they are, but sits and dreams of what it might do if it held power. Even its facts are at fault. The conference report declared that "the advantage to wheatgrowers over other producers which formerly obtained through protective tariffs has now been neutralised, so far as the exporting industries are concerned, by the raising of the rate of exchange to £125, the wheatgrowers having nothing to gain from any increase abovu par." Yet less than three weeks ago it was announced that the Wheat Purchase Control Board had made arrangements for the first shipment of surplus wheat estimated at 2,000,000 bushels. Upon every bushel of this wheat there will be an exchange bounty of 25 per cent above par.