The Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING “LUCEO NON URO” FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1937. “Tory Racketeers”

Southland Times, Issue 23307, 17 September 1937, Page 6

The Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING “LUCEO NON URO” FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1937. “Tory Racketeers”

In opening the Address-in-Reply debate in the House of Representatives on Wednesday night the Labour member for Thames, Mr James Thorn, attempted to defend the new season’s guaranteed prices by alleging that the opposition to them had been engineered by a group of “Tory racketeers” among the farmers’ leaders. He declared that there was “virtual unanimity” in favour of the guaranteed price principle, and he was “sure” the racketeers did not represent the great body of common-sense farmers. If Mr Thorn could attend the meeting of dairy factory suppliers which is to be resumed in Invercargill this morning, he might be a little less sure. These suppliers represent 95 per cent, of the dairy produce output of the province, and there is among them not virtual, but complete, unanimity that the guaranteed prices recently announced by the Minister of Marketing do not provide adequate compensation for heavily increased costs. Perhaps they are all “Tory racketeers”— or, to borrow Mr Semple’s phrase, “contemptible, damnable and despicable conservatives”; their offence is that they have dared to question a decision of the omniscient Labour Government. The justice of their case Mr Thorn denied with a wave of the hand — the increase in factory costs was “infinitesimal”, dairy farmers should know better than to claim a price which would leave a deficit of at least £5,000,000, and so on. But the farmers are not concerned with deficits; they are concerned with promises. A political party bidding recklessly for their votes promised them returns on which they could maintain a standard of living comparable with that enjoyed by workers in the cities. That was the “promise” designed to catch the farmers, just as the sales tax and exchange reduction “promises” were designed to catch city workers. The bait was taken; the party became the Government; and since then the farming community, with growing dismay, has watched the Government take one step after another to increase the level of internal costs. Up to a point these increases in costs can be, and have been, passed on; but the farmer cannot pass them on. He cannot put a price on his product; he must take what he can get for it. At the moment, the dairy farmei’ is not in the open market: he receives a price fixed by the Government. But this price must bear some reasonably close relation to the price level overseas, or the Government and the country will quickly be saddled with insurmountable deficits in the Dairy Industry Account. Therefore, if the dairy farmer is to have his fair standard of living, costs must not be allowed to rise beyond the level that a country almost completely dependent on overseas markets can genuinely sustain. This is the lesson which the Government has yet to learn; and until" it is learned neither the dairy farmer nor the taxpayer — in fact, no one —can feel at ease. It is the Government’s deliberate ignoring of this economic fact that is responsible for the dairy farmers’ protests; and in view of what they were promised and palpably have not received, their protests are not unwarranted. The guaranteed prices cannot be raised without creating dangerous deficits (as it is, the aggregate deficit at the end of the second year of the scheme is unlikely to be far short of £3,000,000); yet if the prices are left as at present the Government will have broken faith with the dairy farmers. This is the situation today, and it is a situation of the Government’s own making. The dairy farmers have established a case. Mr Thorn’s only answer is to call them political names.