IMPORTED FRUIT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 86, Issue 307, 30 December 1942, Page 2

IMPORTED FRUIT

PRICES AND SUPPLIES STATEMENT BY MINISTER. The following reply was made last week by the Minister of Marketing, Mr. Barclay, to criticism by the Bureau of Importers in connection with the prices and supplies of fruit, with particular reference to bananas, pineapples and oranges:— “The attempt by the Bureau of Importers to mislead the public wiil not be appreciated by that vast majority of reasonably-minded people who know the impossibility of anybody, whether Government or private concerns, supplying full quantities of imported fruits under present wartime conditions. To suggest that there is little or no difficulty in arranging supplies and shipping from the islands and Australia is obviously incorrect, and no one should be more aware of this position than the officials of the Bureau of Importers. “The Internal Marketing Division has accepted every case of pineapples under reasonable shipping conditions from both Fiji and Tonga, and up till recently has had a standing order in Australia for regular shipments. It is quite evident that, with the increased local demand for citrus fruit and pineapples in these countries for military supplies, only small quantites are available for export to New Zealand. Prices in Australia are now so high, and the quality of the fruit so unreliable, that the division has withdrawn Its order until prices become more reasonable. The latest quotation from Australia was 29s 3d f.o.b. for a case containing between 16 and 20 pines. The division has made practically 7 no profit from its pineapple importations. Departmental Method. “The suggestion by the bureau that the division or the Price Tribunal fixed prices of pineapples and certain other imported fruits is simply another wrong statement. The division passes fruit to the wholesale distributors to be auctioned. In the case of pineapples on the value placed on each case by retailers according to the number and quality of the contents. To prevent prices soaring, as has already happened in the case of uncontrolled fruits, such as grapes, cherries, strawberries, the division nlaces a maximum of 30s a case on Island pineapples, which is far below the figure that retailers would pay if there were no ceiling. “The only recent Island shipment landed in perfect condition, and retailers placed the maximum price on nearly all the fruit. Many shipments of Australian pineapples, however, have landed in poor condition, and after paying the high f.o.b. original cost, ulus transport charges throughout New Zealand, wastage, and selling cost, most shipments have been sold at a ’loss and not at an exhorbitant profit, as suggested by the bureau. “If the bureau is so anxious for an inquiry, let it. make inquiries first as to the source of its own information so that the statements by 7 this body in future may oe accepted by the public as reliable.” constant than a man’s pulse; you could be invited to lire a test burst from one of the guns, feel it bounce and spit under your hand, and watch the little spouts rise where the bullets struck the sea and the blue smoke ribbons falling away from the tracers. You could go forward and look over the pilot’s shoulder at the maze of dials on the instrument panel. You could watch the navigator, in the nose of the ship, taking drift readings and pouring over his chart. But all of those things chopped only a few minutes out o>each long hour. You envied everyone else that he had something to do. There was only 7 one thing life—it’s easy to sleep in a plane, and you might just as well curl up on that stretcher amidships and doze the time away. Lunch was a relief from monotony as well as a relief from hunger. It came out of American cans—salmon, cheese, biscuits and grapefruit juice. It was refreshing and good. Big Fish. We saw something down there on the water: a cluster of brownish objects that looked to me like men supported by their Mae West life jackets. A crew shot down? Were we getting near the battle? I forgot this flight had ever been montonous. We circled over them, banking steeply, and peered down. They were moving—but men don’t move like that. Big fish do, however, and these were only big fish. We stopped circling and resumed our course, and the monotony came back. Now we had reached the furthest point in our patrol, and it was time to make for home. Somehow the hours went more quickly, for the weather was changing and we flew into tropical rainstorms. All hough our island base was shrouded in low ere' 7 cloud, the navigator hit it right on the nose. We had sighted no hostile ships, sunk no submarines. The only excitement. if it could be called that, came at the last minute. As we skirted the rain clouds, seeking a gap which would lead us into the airfield, a flight, of light American machines closed in on us like chickens scurrying to a mother hen’s wings. Their pilots made signs which we read as a request to show them the way in, for this territory was new to them. Breaking through the mi.st, we guided them home and followed the last one down into the fly-ridden mugginess of the island base. “Anything doing?” somebody asked as we climbed down from the plane. “Not a thing.” Two lines of a Tin Pan Alley 7 song were ringing in my head as I walked towards the waiting truck: And what did we see? We saw the sea. It is like that in this job our air crews are doing up there. It will be like that—until one day. . . .