19 July 2004

Apple growers should vote for 'single desk' unity

Green MP Ian Ewen-Street says apple growers should seriously consider returning their industry to the single body marketing structure.

Apple growers are due to vote for the second time in six months on a plan to unite the $400 million industry into one, 'single desk' body.

"Vertical integration makes sense for the simple reason that New Zealand is a very small drop in the ocean in world volume terms so needs a co-operative, united approach to achieve a critical exporting mass," said Mr Ewen-Street, the Green Party's Agriculture Spokesperson.

"The reforms of the eighties turned producer boards on their heads, threw the apple and dairy sectors into turmoil and destroyed the single desk entities. Apple growers has had time to reflect on the right wing, everyone-for-themselves ideology inflicted on them, so should vote to bring back the united structure that served their industry so well for so many years," said Mr Ewen-Street.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>