TE AWAMUTU COURIER. Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. MONDAY, 7th DECEMBER, 1936. THE LOCAL MARKETS.

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3843, 7 December 1936, Page 4

TE AWAMUTU COURIER. Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. MONDAY, 7th DECEMBER, 1936. THE LOCAL MARKETS.

AT last comes the announcement of an enforceable control of the local markets for dairy produce. The Prime Minister has disclosed an intention of the Government to supplement its merchandising plans to the extent of directing the sale of dairy produce within New Zealand, its scheme to become effective on Ist February next. The marvel is that there has been so much temporising and delay in the sphere where control offered scope for action. Years ago the leaders of the dairying industry turned to the overseas markets, and made many hazardous experiments when, at their own doors, ruinous competition defeated the high ideals they professed. The story of the local markets is one of the sorriest pages in the annals of co-operative endeavour in New Zealand, and although voluntary methods have held sway the record of performance is one of subtlety ending in what Mr Semple has called “commercial cannibalism.” In the competitive bidding for this market, although masquerading under the name of co-operation and implying the highest ideals of collective endeavour, only defeatist policies have crept in to rob the market of whatever advantages it may have possessed. Now, however, at long last, this is to be altered, and Mr Savage promises a Government-controlled scheme which is to institute a national ideal in a truly national service. So far only a broad outline is given, and

many details have yet to reveal themselves, particularly outstanding being the actual constitution of the merchandising authority—whether it will have a democratic character or whether it will possess in greater degree the qualities of a business executive. Sincerely may it be hoped that the latter will prevail. This is no occasion for the fates to hang in the balance of a popular vote, and the welfare of the producers would be better served by administrative direction in the fulfilment of what is essentially a commercial and not a political institution. The more it can be freed from the political or the vote-catch-ing side, the better will it be for everybody. A director has been selected as the Government nominee, and in the selection we are assured that past experience has been called to account. Some, no doubt, will find from the past attachments which occasion suspicion; the memory of a contract which put the co-operators in oiie province at a serious disadvantage cannot be quickly forgotten. But it can be admitted that no selection could have offered, if it drew experience from the ranks of erstwhile competitors, which did not have some attachment to a vested interest somewhere, and, moreover, it would not be difficult to discover a skeleton in the competitive cupboard of every appointee who could have claimed experience of the markets. In past marketing there have been treachery and cunning, and no merchandiser seems to have escaped the evils of an unruly marketing system. Mr Savage is not unmindful of this when he says the director will cut adrift entirely from his earlier associates. The knowledge of the “ tricks of the trade,” however, should be the greatest asset a director can carry into the future of a more orderly control mechanism, and from that angle it may be well indeed that the Government has entrusted responsibility to one who is not immune from a share in the very factors which it is hoped now to correct. In any case, the question to-day is one of principle and not of personnel; and amongst the very first considerations is the question whether export parity should regulate local prices. Every other commodity on the local markets is priced according to the costs of supply, and if it is a product of New Zealand which needs protection it is kept at a price level comparable with costs by the incidence of a tariff or some other device. The same guiding rule should apply to dairy produce. It is farcical in the extreme that London parities have guided voluntary price-fixing in the past. The new director of marketing can at once correct this, and the producers are entitled to look to him to do so at once. The consumer in New Zealand can rightly pay the price fully in keeping with the generally accepted cycle of costs, and it matters not whether his purchases be textiles or machinery, buildings or pleasures—or dairy produce. London parity, the equivalent in sterling, has been destroyed by artificial devices in so many directions that a start might now well be made with dairy produce. This is but the producers’ right: they are entitled to an equal sharing in what we regard as a domestic economy; and for that reason Government control of local marketing may be welcomed.