Labour’s Secret

Thames Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 19661, 17 March 1936, Page 3

Labour’s Secret

GUARANTEED PRICES SCHEME. MR. LEE MARTIN’S VIEWS. CONFIDENT OF SUCCESS. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) HAMILTON, March 17. “It is the best secret that has ever been kept in New Zealand and it is going to he kept until it is broad cast from Parliament.” This statement was made bv the Minister lor Agriculture, the Hon. W. Lee Martin, when referring at Te Mata to the Government’s guaranteed prices scheme. In his references to the guaranteed prices scheme, Mr. Lee Martin said that the dairying industry had been consulted as to the Government's plans, although it was obvious that the Government could not mu and discuss them with each of the 500 dairy companies in New Zealand. The Government had kept in touch with the industry, however, and he denied that there had been no consultations. lie was eontident that the legislation would meet with the Wholehearted approval of 90 per cent, of the industry. The Government, he continued, would give the people engaged in dairying something they had never enjoyed before. It would do away with the slavery that was involved by the employment of women and children in the cowsheds. Mortgages would be readjusted and land would be given its productive value.

The Government had been in consultation, with the Farmers’ Union regarding the hours ot work on farms and in dairy factories. The Government did not expect to reduce the hours of farm workers to 40 hours, but it believed the hours could be reduced very considerably.