THE GUARANTEED PRICE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23156, 30 September 1938, Page 10

THE GUARANTEED PRICE

Once again, addressing a gather- | ing at Ngfttca, the Minister of Marketing has indicated that when the price of dairy produce is fixed, there is no power to reduce it. In a necessarily compressed report of what ho said, the declaration is not given so clearly as when he spoke at Eketahuna last week, yet the purport is the same. The Minister suggests that the law prevents any reduction once the season's rates have been fixed. If he regards himself as hound in that way, it can be accepted that the price will not be reduced during the season, but, on the ordinary commonsense reading of the statute it is only because he chooses so to interpret the clause. To quote the exact words again, the passage runs: "Xo variation reducing the price to be paid for any dairy produce shall apply to any dairy produce in respect of which a higher price has been paid, or in respect of which a right lo receive or an obligation to pay a higher price has accrued before the making of the variation." If legal language means anything at all,, that clause establishes the right to reduce the guaranteed price, especially when it follows another which says: "The i prices fixed by any Order-in-Council under Section 20 or Section 22 of the principal Act may, in accordance with this section, be at any time, in like manner, varied." Everything I of course turns on what is meant | by "an obligation to pay a higher 1 price" having "accrued." If the prices are fixed in August, an ' obligation to pay them for butter and cheese that will be manufactured 1 in November has surely not thereby . accrued. If not, then there can be ' variation upward or downward. That is the commonsense of the position, jlf Mr. Nash thinks otherwise, the price remains unalterable as long | as he is the controlling authority, but the law does not bind him.