WHEAT AND FLOUR DUTIES.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 October 1927, Page 6

WHEAT AND FLOUR DUTIES.

The final decision cf the Government in regard to protective duties on wheat and Sour is worse than was anticipated even so recently as the introduction of the tariff resolutions into the House of Reprtrental ives. The duties as laid down in the Customs Amendment Bill, which was passed by the House on Friday last, are twopence per bushel higher upon wheat, and ten shillings per ton upon flour, than those in the original draft of the tariff. In the Minister’s long speech in defence of these duties he gave no indicatio.i >.f

the circumstances whiah have led the Government to make still heavier the cost of these most necessary commodities. Nor did he show that the State has been given the. slightest guarantee that, as a result of the duties being imposed, there will b'e any definite increase in local wheatgrowing. As the member for Taranaki (Mr. C. E. Bellringer) pointed out, what did happen immediately the duties were announced was an. increase in the price of fowl-wheat which has made the extension of the poultry industry in this province extremely unlikely. Stripped of all Ministerial camouflage, the plain fact is that the Government has yielded to the wheatgrowers’ demands and has ignored the interests of the general consumer. Whether the elaborate sliding scale of duties is found practical or not, the standard upon which they are framed hae put out of sight any chance of the ‘‘cheap loaf” In New Zealand households. Both Mr. Bellringer and the member for Stratford (Mr. E. Walter) interpreted the feeling of their constituents upon this question, and they are to be commended for carrying, their protest against the duties to the length of voting against their own party. . It is exceedingly unfortunate that in order to favour one class of farming all the other branches of that industry and the general community should be called upon to foot the bill. The country is entitled to considerably greater justification for such a policy than Ministers have seen fit to vouchsafe, and they will have themselves to thank if the conclusion is arrived at that real justification does not exist.