COMMODITY COUNCILS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23053, 2 June 1938, Page 12

COMMODITY COUNCILS

The further exposition of the functions of the oommodity councils, whose formation was proposed at the recent Empire producers' conference in Sydney, is unconvincing and merely serves to confirm objections already raised. The report of Mr. W. W. Mulholland, president of the Farmers' Union, tends to emphasise what the councils would not attempt to do rather than to assert for them any immediate practical purpose. They appear to be neither fish, fowl, nor good red herring. If in the future all the other Empire suppliers of the British market should organise their trades on the model of the New Zealand produce boards, then the councils would be set up to "co-ordinate the regulation" of the boards. Surely this is very far-fetched. Even if the other Dominions organised boards and entered the councils, the latter's function would be purely advisory, lacking any power of enforcement, and advice would only issue upon a unanimous agreement. The prospects of such agreement among competing suppliers of the same market can be readily assessed, along with the value of the whole scheme. Moreover New Zealand has already claimed and received a special exemption and dispensation on her own behalf, that the councils should not come between her and Britain in direct negotiations. What.with one thing and another, the decisions at Sydney have the appearance of Geneva conventions or protocols, being subject to so many reservations as to be of no practical effect. Farmers may marvel that their delegates should persist in recommending the councils, especially as they were the invention —certainly not disinterested—of the British National Farmers' Union. New Zealand will do well not to play fly to this sectionally-marked British spider.