EXCHANGE BENEFIT

Taranaki Daily News, 6 October 1934, Page 9

EXCHANGE BENEFIT

PRESENT ANOMALIES. NF-F-D FOR NEW DISTRIBUTION. Christchurch, Oct. 1. Referring to the fixation of the rate of hank exchange, at the annual meeting of the Canterbury Employers’ Association last evening, Mr. S. G. Holland, the president, declared there were anomalies in the present position which would have to be removed to provide a moreequable distribution of the funds available to assist primary producers of goods for export. “In regard to the fixation of the rate of bank exchange it is, I think, generally agreed that this measure was enacted as a measure of farmer relief, a measure to help the farmer to bridge the gap between his production costs and the prices he received,” said Mr. Holland. “The measure is, however, somewhat paradoxical in its application. First, it imposes hn indirect burden of taxation upon the taxpayer without any regard to his capacity to pay; by that I mean it taxes the relief workers and the poor on almost everything they buy. Secondly, it distributes the benefits of relief without any regard to the needs of the recipients. WOOL AND DAIRYING.

“A simple illustration will perhaps better convey my meaning. If a farmer would receive eight pence per pound for his wool at a par rate of exchange he will now receive ten pence, the difference of two pence being his' share pf the 25: per cent, exchange. If,‘as happened last year, wool prices are .doubled,-he-.will receive double the amount of relief, which proves, I think, the paradox in that the less relief the farmer needs the more he will get, and' vice versa. The wool grower last season was in an incomparably better position than he had beeiifor several preyious years but we find his contemporary,' the 'dairy farmer, in really desperate straits and the further his prices recede and the more assistance he needs the less he gets.

“In my opinion the position will have tp be fdeed and the anomaly of the present ’situation removed so -as to provide for a more equable of the funds available to assist bur primary producers of goods for export. The compulsory payment of relief to air farmers who export would be paralleled in the case of worker relief if the ’dole’ was payable to all workers whether in jobs or unemployed. It seems to me that if a ‘means test’ is right in the case;of a relief worker then .it is surely logical that a ‘means test’ should be applied to all recipients of relief, even although that relief is clothed v/ith the better title of bank exchange.”