PM Transcripts

FOR PESS: P2M8./ N1O905.9 .
DAIRYING INDUSTRY COMMITTEE.
STATEMENT BY THE PRIME MINISTER, RT. HON. R. G. MENZISC. H.. Q. C. MP.
In my last Policy Speech I foreshadowed the appointment
of a strong committee to enquire into the various aspects of the
Australian Dairying Industry. The reason for this announcement
was that the Government felt and feels that the problems of the
dairying industry need to be objectively examined with a view to
evolving policies calculated to ensure efficiency and economic
stability. We have now appointed a committee under the chairmanship
of Mr. M. E. McCarthy. Its terms of reference are very
comprehensive, It has to consider the conditions, structure and
problems of the industry against the background of the overall
interests of the nation.
The committee will hold its first meeting in Melbourne
tomorrow ( Thursday). I want to emphasise the extreme importance of this
enquiry which will, 9 I hope, lead to conclusions of a comprehensive
kind. The committee will visit many dairying districts in order
to collect information on the spot. It will have, I am assured,
co-operative help from the various State Governmenits and
departments. Its work, if it is to be successful, will require
full and frank expressions of opinion and propositions of fact
from a great variety of people. This means that information has to
be obtained not only from those who speak for various branches of
the industry but from other citizens who may have criticisms to
offer or suggestions to make. The greater the public interest in
this enquiry, the more likely is it that the committee will be
able to hear and consider conflicting views, not onl y from
producers and from consumers but also from anybody else who
appreciates the importance to the nation of having the whole matter
put upon a sound economic footing.
I express the hope, therefore, that there will be
considerable public interest in the committee's proceedings and
that anybody who feels that he or she has some useful suggestion
or criticism to make should feel at liberty to present these to
the committee. Mr. McCarthy himself is a man of immense experience,
having dealt with many great problems for the Commnonwealth
Government, He has an independent mind and he has with him a
committee selected for its variety of experience and its capacity
for study and judgment.
CANBERRA, A. C. T.
22nd July, 1959.
FOR PRESS%