GUARANTEED PRICES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22832, 17 March 1936, Page 8

GUARANTEED PRICES

It was said by the Prime Minister at a public gathering last week that the time for talking by the Government had passed and that the time for doing things had arrived. He must have forgotten, when he made this statement, that his party was in the habit, when in Opposition, of taunting one of his predecessors with the ability to get things done that was attributed to him though personally never claimed by him. Otherwise Mr Savage would hardly have committed himself to an assertion in which some people may be disposed to detect a ring of boastfulness. Although the Prime Minister has been one of the most reticent of politicians since the responsibilities of office descended upon him, his colleagues have not stopped talking and some of them may not have been talking very wisely. Mr Lee Martin, Minister of Agriculture, has been speaking on two or three occasions of late about the Government’s policy of guaranteed prices to farmers, and has succeeded in contradicting himself rather seriously. This morning he is reported to have expressed regret that he was not at liberty to disclose what the Gowrnmont contemplates. It was only last week, however, that he implied that the country already knew all that it was entitled to know at the present time about the policy of guaranteed prices. A dairy company in the north, reasonably concerned respecting the plan that was to be adopted in relation to its clients’ products, was snubbed by Mr Lee, Martin when it sought information from the Government on the point. “ The Labour Party’s policy of guaranteed prices,” the Minister said, “ was fully explained prior to the elections and was unmistakably approved by the electors, including the dairy farmers.” Unfortunately we are unable to agree with Mr Lee Martin that there was any definite and intelligible explanation of the plan during, or prior to, the election campaign. Candidates standing in the interest of the Labour Party were obliged to commend, as far as they could, the policy of guaranteed prices to the favourable consideration of the constituencies to which they were offering their services. One plan of guaranteed prices, apparently devised by the present Minister of Lands, who thought so much of it that it was

circulated in pamphlet form, exposed itself so much to criticism that the parly hurriedly dropped it. But there was certainly no explanation of the plan which the Government proposes to submit to Parliament. It, was only in the vaguest terms that members of the party discussed it on the election platform. How could there have been any full explanation of the plan, prior to the elections, when it has only been evolved after long consideration has been given to it by the Cabinet, which is said to have had three different schemes prepared for it by the departmental officers to whom the preparation of the Government’s policy was entrusted? It is wholly misleading to say, as the. Minister of Agriculture now says, that there is not a section of the farming industry, or dairying industry, from producer to distributor that has not been consulted. And if any fresh proof of this were required it is provided in Mr Lee Martin’s own claim that the Government’s scheme “ is the best secret that has ever been kept in this country.”