SHORTAGE OF ORANGES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26311, 16 November 1946, Page 8

SHORTAGE OF ORANGES

POLICY OF UNDER-SUPPLY

NATIONAL CANDIDATE’S CHARGE The statement that the public had been deprived of commodities which it could otherwise have enjoyed, because it was Mr Nash’s deliberate policy to keep the market undersupplied so that he could be sure of a ready sale, was made by Mr T. K. S. Sidey, National candidate for Dunedin Central, in his address at St. Andrew's Hall last night. As an example Mr Sidey mentioned oranges which, he said, had once been imported at the rate of 50,000 bushel cases a year Since then the Internal Marketing Department had taken over, and only 12,000 cases had been imported this year It was useless to say that oranges could not be obtained, because they could be bought in Australia at 10 or 12 for Is. Nor could lack of shipping be pleaded because the ship which had always brought the oranges was still running. In the same period, said Mr Sidey, prices had risen from between 13s lOd and 18s 9d to 32s 6d, and the Government must now make from 3s to 5s on every case of Australian oranges and 8s on Jamaican oranges. The National Party would leave the importation of oranges to private enterprise, which would be prepared to give the same service for 3d a case and would do well at that. “ You have to pay,” Mr Sidey concluded, “ in order to make up for the losses in other branches of the Marketing Department.”