INACCURACIES ALLEGED

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19881, 7 March 1939, Page 7

INACCURACIES ALLEGED

MR. COATES’ STATEMENT

MEAT IMPORTS CUT

REPLY. BY MR. NASII

(Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day

lii the course of a reply to the Rt Hon. J. G. Coates regarding the British meat import restrictions, the Minister of Customs, the Hon. W. Nash, says the Government has pressed home to the full New Zealand’s claims for a favourable market in the United Kingdom.

■Without pretending that our problems all had 'been solved or, for that matter, ever will be completely in any final sense, we had a good measure of success. This year despite the United Kingdom Government’s decision to reduce Empire mutton and lamb imports, the Government and the Meat Board had been able, in full agreement, to promise and announce that there would be no restriction here. That was not to suggest that the Government would slacken its efforts to ensure an expanding market for New Zealand produce.

“We do not want to harp unduly on the past,” said Mr. Nash. “The present and the future are more our concern, but when Mr. Coates boasts in all his quoted discussions of his case that regulation is not restriction, has he altogether forgotten the order he and the Government made in 1934 prohibiting absolutely certain classes of ibeef and veal exports. Even if he has, I think the farmers have not forgotten the bearing of this on their returns on bobby calves for instance. So much for Mr. Coates and his no-restriction inaccuracies. The task of the Labour Government is to avoid these disastrous measures of previous Governments. We have our difficulties and are well aware that we have 'our shortcomings, yet we need not fear comparison with those who went before, not even with Mr. Coates.”