Copra Values

How New Guinea Producers Are Being Robbed

The following letter was sent to the editors of Australian Metropolitan newspapers on January 27 by the editor of the “Pacific Islands Monthly”. Most of them printed it:— THE difference to the primary producer between Socialist control of mar kets and a free market is illustrated by the case of the New Guinea coco nut planters.

For copra delivered into depots at Rabaul, Samarai, or Port Moresby, the Commonwealth Government to-day pays the planter £35/10/- per ton—£34/17/6 in the case of Madang, Kavieng and Kokopo. That copra is sold by the Com monwealth in Sydney at between £5O and £5l/10/- per ton. In British Colonies—such as Fiji, Ceylon, Malaya— the price is controlled under a system whereby the British Socialist Govern ment compels its Governors to buy all copra for the British Department of Food on contracts extending over 2, 3 or 5 years. The price paid in Fiji de livered into store is now £3B per ton (Fijian Currency, equal to nearly£43 per ton Australian). The price in Ceylon and in Malaya is considerably more—the latest report puts Ceylon copra at about £6O sterling per ton.

But in the world’s only free market— that is in the north Pacific, where the law of supply and demand operates with out restriction between the great copra producing territory of Philippines, and North America —the price of copra a fortnight ago was 345 dollars per ton C.I.F. Vancouver —well over £lOO Aus tralian. Prices quoted in the Chicago Journal of Commerce of December 9 and December 19 show that vegetable oils (soya bean, cotton seed, corn, peanut, linseed and coconut) range from 21 cents to 33 cents per lb. Crude coconut oil on December 9 was quoted on the Pacific coast at 25 cents per lb. —equal to over £2OO Australian per ton.

Why should New Guinea coconut pro ducers be robbed in this outrageous fashion? Australian growers of wool and wheat, because they have representa tion in Parliament and can pack a heavy political kick, get something like world parity. New Guinea planters having no representation and being com pletely at the mercy of Minister Ward’s bureaucracy, are robbed, on British Empire prices, of anything from £lO to £2O per ton on copra, and on world free market prices of very much more.

Seeing that New Guinea planters suffered far more in the war than any other Australian producing class, surely political decency and common justice might have insured that these people were allowed to benefit to the fullest extent from the world’s present extra ordinary prices.

It was shown months ago that New Guinea copra producers were being grossly underpaid by the Socialist Gov ernment. Driven into a corner, the Gov ernment then announced that it was withholding £6 per ton from copra producers and creating a “stabilisation” fund—for what purpose has never been explained. The planters, for a variety of reasons, have no confidence in any such plan—all they ask is that they be freed of Government interference and be given the benefit of world parity, like any other Australian producers.