THAT BUTTER FAT BRIBE.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 15978, 21 November 1919, Page 4

THAT BUTTER FAT BRIBE.

Natukalia-, as a. Reform candidate, Mr Cuttle defends Mr Massey's action in paying .£340,1 'OO fronC'Die Consolidated Fund to butter producers. Mr Cuttle dtcla es that, the batter producers thoroughly deserved this gift, but mefny other people Lake a very different view of tho matter. Tho Napier Telegraph says: “Wo content ourselves with pointing out not only that tho butter manufacturers really made groat gains by the commandeer, instead of tlio hypothetical loss alleged by Mr Massey as his justification for giving them public money so lavishly, but also, if it is to ix) a question of ica! loss, the fruitgrowing industry has sustained it. Yet tho industry which has lost is now being taxed to provide a huge Ixmus for these who have made immense gaJiio out of the consumers as a body, and out of fruit-growers as forming a part of that body. We have no doubt tbe-fruit-growers of Hawke’s Day will appreciate the situation at its true value, political and e otherwise/' The gift was rushed through an almost empty House in tho dying hours of the session. The people of this country are not blind. They know very well why the public funds are drawn upon in this manner on tho eve of an election. Mr Massey’s assertion that tho payments from the Consolidated Fnnd to butter producers “had resulted in cheaper butter to the public” is denied by tho Lyttelton Times, which states that the subsidy is absolutely wrong and unsound morally and economically, and it has not made butter cheaper to the public. The Times refers to it as “That Butter Fat Bribe,” and goes on to say: “The equalisation fund established by the Hou. W. D. S. Mac Donald certainly did protect tho public. It prevented" the price of butter going from Is M a pound up to half-a-crown. But Mr Massey stopped the equalisation ’ scheme and tricked the people by paying part of their butter bill for them out of their own pockets. The payment of these subsidies from tho Consolidated Fund is as preposterously absurd, .os a scheme to help the public, as could well be imagined, because the money so used to cheapen butter to the people must first be taken from the people by way of taxation. As we have shid before, these political tricks of raiding the Consolidated Fund ought to be made illegal.”

A COMPARISON, t T>tg N.Z. Times points out that when tho self-styled Reform Party planned its colossal bribe of .£340,000 to the butter producers and manufacturers, as an easy method of buying its way to success at tho general election, it wholly left out of its calculations other sections of tho producers who were heavily hit by the war and the sacrifices it entailed. Our contemporary instances the fruit industry, and goes on to say: By the arrangement that was made by the Government in the interests of the butter producers, these people were assured of a certain market for their product, with the provision of ships to take the butter away, and guaranteed returns higher than pre-war prices. The butter producers were unquestionably on a good and safe wicket. But how about the fruit producers? There were no fixed pricts in their interests, there wage no Government guarantee to assure them payment, and there was no shipping space to enable them to get their fruit to a profitable market. They were left to shift for themselves. We know what happened. In some cases fruit was allowed to rot on the ground, because it would not pay for the packing, and wo know that iu ' Wellington apples sold from the street "stands at merely nominal prices. There is, however, no place for the fruitgrowers, whose war sacrifice was considerable, in “Reform’s” wholesale scheme of preelection bribery and corruption. Not only must the struggling fruitgrower put up with his own war sacrifice, but he must also submit to he taxed to make good his- share* of the bribe of ,£340,000 paid to the butter producers and manufacturers to influence their votes. However, the fruit growers arc no worse off in this respect than the heads of families throughout the country, and especially in tho centres of population, who paid high prices for their butter during the whole of the war period, and who are required now to make gpod their share of this ,£340,000 for the benefit of butter producers and manufacturers who were doing better during the war period- than they had done in any previous time in their history. And then Mr Massey, amongst his supporters in the butter-producing centre of Pukckohe, invites the electors to work strenuously for success for what ho calls an honest Government.