RURAL CREDITS COMMISSION.

Otago Witness, Issue 3830, 9 August 1927, Page 12

RURAL CREDITS COMMISSION.

CURTAILMENT OF ITINERARY.

EMPHATIC REPLY TO CRITICISM. WELLINGTON, August 2.

In respect to Mr Polson’s statement with regard to curtailing the itinerary of the Commission on Rural Credits, the Prime Minister made the following reply to-day:— “ I have read the report of Mr Polson's speech, and observe that he state that I had failed to bring down legislation last session giving effect to all the recommendations in the Commission’s report on the ground that the Commission had returned to New Zealand too late for this to he done, and that the Commission had cabled to me intimating that it was ready to return; but that I had sent it on to othe’* countries. I have had an opportunity of lobking into the files, and I find that the first action was embodied in a cablegram which I despatched to the chairman of the Commission at Buenos Aires on February 2, 1926, suggesting for consideration a curtailment of the original itinerary of the Commission and the confining of further operations to an investigation of the conditions in such-European countries as France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and Germany, thus considerably reducing the original extended itinerary. I may point out that the Commission was going to England from Buenos Aires, and that the countries named arc all more or less adjacent to Great Britain. My telegram was replied to by the chairman on the following day, stating that a majority Of the Commission agreed that a modification of the itinerary was feasible, though one disagreed. My reply bn February 4 was that the question was. left entirely to the judgment of the Commission; but repeating my former suggestion as to the desirability of a brief investigation in France and other important European dairying countries. It will therefore be

seen that the initiative to hasten the Commission’s investigations came from myself: but that I left the matter entirely to the judgment of the Commission. This, I think, disposes of the implication made in Mr Poison’s speech that I delayed the Commission in completing its report.”