GUARANTEED PRICE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20839, 22 September 1937, Page 6

GUARANTEED PRICE

PRODUCER CONTROL ADVOCATED MR THORN’S TACTICAL ERROR (From Our Parliamentary Reporter) WELLINGTON, September 21. The futility of quoting the remarks of a South Canterbury dairy factory director in support of the guaranteed price scheme was stressed by Mr T. D. Burnett, M.P., for Temuka, during the Address-in-Reply debate in the House of Representatives to-day. The quotation referred to had been made by Mr J. Thorn in moving the Address-in-Reply motion, and had been repeated by other Government speakers. “Mr Thorn made a grave tactical error in taking as a champion of guaranteed prices the chairman of directors of one of the smallest dairy factories in one of the least important dairying districts of New Zealand,” Mr Burnett said. “He did not give us any of the views of dairy representatives from Auckland, Ta anaki or Wellington. The last shipping returns show that Auckland exported 124,000 tons of butter and Wellington 33,000 tons, but the amount shipped fr mi Timaru was only 689 tons. A few days after the statement quoted by Government members was made at Timaru, there was a meeting of dairy farmers at Temuka where there was strong criticism against the guaranteed price. If I were to give my own personal views about the guparanteed price policy, I am afraid I would not be allowed to express myself in the picturesque language which we use in the high country. The farmer first and last and all the time is an individualist, and will always remain so. He likes to handle the products from his own land, and he believes in producer control, not bereaucratic control.”