GUARANTEED PRISES

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18206, 29 September 1933, Page 7

GUARANTEED PRISES

LABOR PARTY SCHEME MINISTER’S CRITICISM WOULD COST £20,000,000 (Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. Tire Minister of Lands, the Hon. E, A. Ransom, endeavored in the House last night to analyse the Labor Party’s alternative to the high exchange rate, and the probable cost to the Dominion. Labor, he said, objected to the high

exchange, but he, personally, failed to see how guaranteed prices could be applied except at a' very much larger cost than the present system. Of course, the farmers would welcome guaranteed prices if' they could be paid, but he knew of none who advocated that method, . because they realised that if was neither sound nor equitable. It would bring no fresh capital into the ‘country. To ascertain how guaranteed prices would work, he had taken as a basis the average prices from 1926 till 1932, and to make up the prices of butter to that average for the year(ended June, 1933, ho found that/ it would have required £10,000,000. If wool and other leading export commodities were included, the cost would be £20,000,000 for the same period. How would this sum he provided? As a primary producer himself, lie was interested, to discover how £20,000,000 in excess of'the sale value of his commodities could be raised. The Hon. A. Hamilton: It is worse than the exchange.

Mr. Ransom agreed, adding that the Labor Party would either have to apply direct taxation, or provide a currency issue, though lie failed to see how.it was possible to draw any cheque . or negotiable instrument against a value which did not exist, the goods having already been sold at less than the guaranteed price. Every primary producer had benefited by (lie increased exchange, though he was not suggesting that every farmer got the full 29 per cent., nor did the farmer who got it retain it. The advantage went to the whole community, because this money went into circulation, increasing the purchasing power of the people.