AUSTRALIA AND POTATOES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22004, 10 January 1935, Page 8

AUSTRALIA AND POTATOES

The possibility of an improvement in trade relations between New Zealand and Australia has been increased by the statement Mr. J. A. Lyons has made to a gathering of Tasmanian potato-growers. Mr. Lyons took the courageous and not the easy way by going to Tasmania, where opposition to any lifting of the embargo is keenest, and where his own electorate lies, to produce his propositions. It was strenuously contested at the meeting, but the Prime Minister's attitude in emphasising the interests of a wider community promises well. Yet it has to be noted that the Commonwealth Government proposes to allow only carefully restricted quantities of New Zealand potatoes to be admitted, by adding quantitative regulation to a protective duty. Governments nowadays seem determined to decide more and more the amounts of various commodities the community shall be allowed to consume. It is even more noticeable that once any form of control, from absolute exclusion downward, is imposed, it is relinquished reluctantly and only in part. In this instance it must be admitted that New Zealand set the example, and a thoroughly bad example it was. When it was decided that oranges from districts certified free of fruit fly could be allowed into New Zealand, quantities were strictly regulated. There seems to have been no conception of allowing the consumptive demand of the country to determine how many oranges should be imported. The State had to decide this. Yet eating oranges is not an anti-social habit, to be banned or strictly regulated. But Governments nowadays know so much better than the people what is good for them that even the allowance of oranges has to be rationed. Australia has speedily caught the infection, so that the potatoes allowed into the Commonwealth will be limited to an arbitrary figure, which may be absurdly too large, or far too small, according to the supply here or the demand in Australia. The restriction reduces the value of Mr. Lyons' proposed concession, but even in its modified form it is welcome.