AFFILIATION REJECTED

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19597, 31 March 1938, Page 16

AFFILIATION REJECTED

POULTRY PRODUCERS AID OF FARMERS’ UNION SUGGESTION OF POLITICS • (Par Press Association.) WELLINGTON, last night. A suggestion that the New Zealand Poultry Producers' Federation should affiliate with the New Zealand Farmers' Union and so co-operate in presenting the primary producers’ case to the Government, was rejected by 13 votes to 0, following a keen debate at the annual conference of the Federation at Wellington to-day. The question was raised in a remit from the Waikato district council which was moved by Captain G. D. Hunter. The federation, he said, did not appear to have made very much progress on its own. “By getting the union to give what support it can to those aspects of our policy it is able to, we stand a better chance of getting more notice taken of us,” he said. Mr. E, J. S. Miller, of Taranaki, said the Farmers’ Union was a powerful organisation, but in the past it had sponsored so many "wild-cat” schemes that it had not the influence in political circles that its numbers would lead one to believe it had. “We would not serve the cause of the poultry Industry, by with the Farmers’ Union,” said Mr. Miller. “If we affiliate, the Farmers’ Union will naturally expect us to sponsor its cause, if it sponsors the federation’s cause. Its operations extend into the political field, although, perhaps, they are not supposed to. There is a definite danger that we would be dragged in there is well.”