LOCAL BUTTER MARKET

Waipa Post, Volume 45, Issue 3267, 13 December 1932, Page 8

LOCAL BUTTER MARKET

MR A. J. SINCLAIR'S SCHEME.

VARYING VIEWPOINTS

Although Mr A. J. Sinclair, of Te Awamutu, is receiving letters of encouragement by every mail in connection with his scheme to place the local butter market on a better basis, the note of criticism is not absent. A member of Parliament, representing a 1 city constituency in the South Island, has written him as follows: VIEW;S OF AN M.P.

" I have considered your scheme. You must remember that I represent a consumers' and not a producers' constituency. I do not suppose there is a pound of butter made in my electorate, and you would not expect me to vote for increasing Ithe cost of living to anything approaching £400,000 a» year for butter alone. To ask the local consumer to pay nearly double the price of exported butter is asking more than I am prepared to support. I do not suppose for one moment that any Government would agree to such a proposal. If it did it would not survive the next election." MR SINCLAIR'S REPLY.

"Your criticism is most unfair," said Mr Sinclair in reply. "No one is asking the consumer to pay ' nearly double the price of exported butter.' You are confusing the wholesale price of bulk butter in London with the retail price of pat butter in New Zealand. Our butter is retailing in London Ito-day at Is a lb to the consumer; it is retailing in your constituency at 9d and lOd a lb. Does that commend itself to you as desirable ? " My proposals for the local market suggest that the consumer should pay 2d a lb more for fresh butter straight from the churn than the farmer receives for a butter which has been stored and frozen for several months. To put it another way: I suggest that the New Zealand consumer should pay Danish parity for a fresh butter. I see nothing unreasonable in this request ,and the numerous expressions of approval I am receiving from the general public aire encouraging. "The farmer in this country has reached the position where he is not worrying over-much whether this Government or any other Government survives the next election. The question of his own survival is taking precedence at the moment. He is beginning to ask himself why he should have to buy all his requirements in a highly-prd'ected market and sell the product of his labour in this country on the parity of the world's cheapest market. It may be necessary with some primary commodities, but it need not be necessary with better. is nothing unfair in asking that the standards which determine the price of a pair of boots should also determine the price of a pound of butter. " Am I asking too much, sir, if I request that you approach this problem, not from the point of view of those city constituents of yours who never made a pound of butter, but from the viewpoint of a section of the community upon whom the well-being of every one of your city constituents depends ? "