Nixon, Holyoake & Mosbacher on New Zealand and Agriculture

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Mr. Gallo, Mr. Frank, it's good to see you again.

Good to see you.

Well, I know you've come all that way around the world.

I was a missin' to sit down over here the night before.

We didn't have a picture.

Is Harry gonna come in or is there too long?

We'll have a picture, will we?

Mr. Frank, I'm getting this from my wife.

It's going to be a little present for you.

Oh, my goodness.

Respect to these kids.

Anybody?

Yes.

Oh, it has to be.

No, I'm not.

I'm not for it.

I never, I never, they never want to lose the dollars.

But that's worth it.

Just two dollars.

That's right.

You look much better in the sun.

So do I.

Who did this computer talk to?

I don't know.

All right.

Well, he's not going to want to do the voting.

He's got to put it out there.

Yes, you've understood.

That's fair enough, really, to let you know.

Everything was, and I said it.

Would you like to sit down with us, and would you like to hear our talk?

You're going directly into the RC, which I do not understand.

I just can't, as you see, I just can't make that thought a woman.

and I don't want any right now.

But I'll be there one day.

Well, I'm in this office.

I'll be there.

I'll never forget my visit to Auckland.

Well, I'm true.

I'm into both.

How nice of you to see me.

You must be as busy as it is.

Well, what else?

Because before I get there, I was consistent with that figure of yours last night.

Oh, did you see it?

Oh, yes.

Thank you, sir.

But you had no problem with the reaction.

No, but I had a slight...

Why, I told you first, yes.

Did you?

As a technician.

I never paid attention, you know.

I don't want to have done it, too.

I did, but I had to react to it again.

It's because I was...

I mean, look, look, look, I'm not trying to do a panic attack, stop me when I'm too old, that kind of thing.

But it was a statement of oppression.

And that's kind of what we see.

These people here, there wasn't a signal of oblivion being harnessed or bullied or pushed about.

As you know, if you get to the end of a long struggle, everybody wants to quit young.

And so we've got both of our parties, a few more in the morning, and our parties are going to come out hard.

And we've got all these people wanting to run off and do silly things, and raising hell, and the students are going to be in next month, and they're raising hell, and this and that and the other thing.

But at this time, I mean, many of my staff, you know, were, with the best of intentions, saying, oh, gee, we've got to announce the end of the draft, or announce that you've got to end the combat, or give a date and the rest.

I said, no, look here.

Are any of those things real life?

And no, I don't remember writing to you.

But I said, my God, you're going to just stick your chin out and say what you're going to do.

So that's what I was doing.

I never believed in wavering with these.

One thing about my critics, and I'm sure you're the same way, they don't know how to play me.

You see, the harder they hit me, the tougher I get.

You know?

Well, you had a good president and you won.

But your people, of course, you and our friends over in Australia, have an enormous interest and are doing the right thing.

You had your force over there and the Australians had theirs.

By God, if the United States gets run out, if we get run out, we're true nation.

And you'll be there.

You'll be there too.

But you know, that'll be your end scene.

And that is why it's so important for the United States to go out in the right way.

Don't you see?

That's what it's all about.

It doesn't mean we're trying to conquer it out of Vietnam.

We couldn't care less.

Let them be what they want.

But you cannot let them conquer the South.

That's all.

This is simple, sir.

I don't know.

I've tried to get

before the end of this, I said, look, if he lives up to my expectations, the best he'll do is say, I've got to withdraw $15,000 a month instead of $12,000.

That's as much as $100,000, which is $14,200.

But that's the money he can take out without, and that stretches it a bit, but they tell him, I've got to hold it to you in advance.

He said they could take it much further.

And of course, you've got to keep some people suddenly now in tears.

They lose confidence now.

Everything we fought for for five years, 45,000 Americans dead, down to two.

You can't do that now.

I mean, as I said at the last meeting about that old Marine sergeant who died, what the hell, uh, he was willing to charge a machine gun, and we ought, I ought to be able to stand here and take a few damn critters.

Correct.

Good.

Tell me this, uh, on the problem of agriculture, uh, the rest, I talk this hard, and we've got some problems here, but, but I want you to know that we do, we do, just as, as much as we can, we try to have in mind your, your special considerations.

I know that, I know that when we do a little blip, it can make a big difference to you.

a little, you know, a big difference to you.

So remember the last time, weren't we talking about a little bit more land?

Yeah, I remember that, Thomas, about that.

You had access to that.

It was marvelous.

Yes, we did.

See, we, us, have produced the world.

Freddie produced the world.

Yeah, that's right.

The other pants were gone.

You know, the guy in that kind of t-shirt.

I'm not as tall as him.

You know, let's put this into perspective again.

We had not quite three million people.

Yeah.

I understand you're British, but all green on the left.

We had approximately 100 million sheep in New Zealand.

3 million people and 100 million sheep.

Let's put New Zealand in perspective.

And none of you are going to pre-access here.

We're going to get us pretty excited.

New Zealand is the best country in Australia.

And your vote diminishes in this country.

We're going to work our heads together.

So, well, they got together and they had to drive them and power drives and then push down just against such and such.

We're called Bushes.

It's the same.

Well, we get it now.

Americans, but people of our land, people of merchandise.

Yeah, that's true.

You see, we're the biggest merchandise dealer in the country.

We know this is a very simple damn thing.

So we produced a Britain, you see, Britain backwards to Britain.

So that's the old butcher in the main street of London.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's butcher stuff.

What happened?

So, I don't know if that goes, I think, get your rest of me, but it'll go there.

It'll be a, it'll be a super market.

But it is a fantastic, I don't know if you like that, normally, I don't know if you'll ever do.

I'm not very excited about that, to tell you the truth.

But, the way it was said, we could, we could, we could, we could afford many, we could afford 22 million packets of the baggage in Britain.

So the little butcher, or the big butcher, he goes to the wholesale industry.

And they've got 10, 20, 50, 100 guys in that one explanation in two or three days.

Hanging them up in the back of his shop.

This is all important.

Usually, man, sir, will kill feathers, will kill duck.

They need to hang them for three or four days.

Who used to cook in Malaysia?

Do you hang this way at all times?

Sure, sure.

And this is what happens in Britain.

So when the housewife goes in and she buys the lamb, and this is aged and conditioned, it's ready for the oven, frying kind of whatever it might be.

Now, coming here, we don't have this.

So we freeze it out there.

I mean, I can't feel it frozen.

It's in the supermarket.

It's still frozen.

The housewife takes it out.

Isn't that damn good?

It's no good, it's not real land.

So the last two or three years, to me, this market particularly, our, we hold a prison work, we hold a packing house, it's a dead thing.

before they freeze.

So you, from now on, that's what you have to do, because nobody here is going to hang.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Well, what I think about this is, you've increased our quality so we've been here.

We were a bit disappointed about this.

There's a 2% fraction of it.

Send those to Australia.

And we were expecting a 4 or 5% increase.

This is pretty vital to us, and we did say, well, we don't think of changes, certainly not seriously.

I think we're failing on this one.

I wonder if I can go on for a little while.

I mean, tell me about that problem.

Sure, sure, sure.

With the visiting club.

Yes.

You have problems with the club over here?

Oh.

Yes.

All right.

We have problems with the industry production.

Well, the land is so out of work.

But, say you've got a problem with the farming here.

You can never have to.

You've got a great big industrial complex.

We can't.

We're farmers.

Yeah.

And so we can't get farmers to help farmers.

We're trying to put the same amount of money in built streets.

And we can't subsidize or give up the initial price.

We've got to buy whatever price we can for the world.

Very, very rich in the things we've concentrated on.

Meat, dairy products.

We, you know, that's true.

We export more meat than anybody else in the world.

600,000 tons of meat is exported a year.

That is a week.

We export more dairy products than anybody else in the world.

Yeah.

In fact, we are all kind, we diversify, we sell all around the world because we are the best traders in the world at least.

But like everything else, like your own farmers, the terms of trade are against us now.

The last five years, terms of trade for us have deteriorated from base 100 to 81.

in Vegas.

It's a hell of a drop.

This is what we're facing.

We'll run with it.

But a little more clearly, in that period, the price of our products that we receive from export have gone up 1% in an inflationary world.

The price of our imports, manufacturing goods for children has gone up 33%.

We're really down, but we really are.

Most of you regard us as a rich country.

We're not poor.

We're a genius.

We're a damn hot country.

But I have some figures from, take a look at those things.

Five years ago again, our position in the world, standard of living, average standard of living was fourth or fifth in Europe.

Fourth or fifth.

Today we are fourteenth.

Every country in Europe is ahead of us in standard of living, acceptably.

And we're working harder.

There are people getting more and more efficient, working harder, trying to catch up.

But the terms of trade are really seriously messed up.

See, we've dropped from 100 to 81 in five years.

Let me see.

Well, that's not true.

So, access to markets is... That's the only way you can really live in Europe.

There's no free trade in the world today.

Yeah, Tommy, do you sell anything in Japan?

Well, there it is.

Yeah, but that would be an awful good market.

Yeah.

But this is New Zealand, and we're, honestly, we are pretty much, I guess we're not poor people yet, as I said, in the biggest compact of things.

I'm not being quite serious.

Now, overseas trade, you see, we've been traders.

I used to work at the Rogers.

I don't worry about the foreign trade.

I don't know why you should be.

Your foreign trade, as I remember, is about four, between four and five percent of your GNP.

Four percent.

Now this is between 24 and 25 percent of our GNP.

So the fluctuation of world markets and the accident of world markets is one big bang for you.

Well, six times as much.

But that's not the thing I'm saying.

You recognize these things, don't you?

And I wouldn't be away with it, dear.

It's private projects.

I'm not the person.

But you have not.

You have raised it with the others.

We have.

So we keep .

I have another .

We have a new council which we set up, which we decided that the Council of International Economic Policy had its first hearing today.

And the assistant in charge of it is Peter Peterson, the former head of .

And I just thought, Henry, that you could pass on some of these things, too.

Oh, man.

So, you see, what that does, basically, is to coordinate the State Department, the Agriculture Department, the Commerce Department, so we speak with one voice in this field.

I know your problems, and I must say that I...

But what I was going to say, Mr. Prime Minister, is that Dr. Kissinger has heard me say many times that

We know who our friends are in the world, and we really want to help our friends.

And we, Willard's Hammond, has stayed in agriculture for us since the summer.

Willard's Hammond, with your names in mind, I sure will.

I can't promise anything until I see it.

You know, we've got our problems, too, with our agricultural lobby and the rest.

And they're awesome, too.

You know, markers, markers, you know, are a great lobby.

We've got more of them than we have.

But, uh, I don't know if this is a practical idea, but this is a before picture from... You wear it.

Oh, yes.

And it shows, you know, what a problem they are.

They're really gung-ho.

But, uh, we'll have this in mind.

We can, too, uh, also, uh...

I was going to ask you another thing.

What effect... What does that say?

No, no, I'm staying on.

What effect is Britain's going into the market?

I've been bothered to come to this show, and he said again to Willie Brown, we can't fix this unless you...

recognize that New Zealand has to have a special religion because we've concentrated on these things for a while.

We've reduced things to want land, nothing else.

Land, Britain, New Zealand.

But, we, as I said, we're the sixth world's leading countries in the world, and they have for some years now had a quota system in the British market for power.

And this was wholly and solely to protect New Zealand's position, and we had some.

We sent it out, it was 76,000 tons of atom of cheese a pound, for instance.

And the French, of course, have been a little bit of an issue anyhow.

But the French messages have been producing a lot of butter.

Three years ago, they had a heap of about 300,000, 400,000 tons of butter.

It's melted, thank God.

There's nothing left of it.

New head of the energy is thinking about it melting away.

So it's recognized by everybody, even the French, that we've got to have some special kind of arrangement.

But the French said, well, for a short period, and then turned the spirits off.

The British would be absolutely, well, the British, they put forward a case.

We would not have a word.

Our word would have been fought, usually, in excess for a couple of hours.

Have energy.

And also the land thing will be coming up with an opportunity to come on there.

Now, your people, Mr. Hartley, you've got a complete bridge there.

And I couldn't have asked for a better reaction from them than I got yesterday.

They probably had an understanding of this and the appreciation of it.

And it's not unlike yours, but for us, it's a much, much, much larger proportion problem of growth.

So this is a critical time for us.

Yes.

If we didn't get a space parade, it would mean disaster to America.

Do you get it?

I don't know how America can go in on what he's done.

He said, I didn't know what he said.

I didn't know what he said.

Oh, we're in some kind of a thing.

For us, we need a continuum.

We said, how do you sell a ton of butter into that market at the present time?

Now the whole world, the rest of the world, does not trade that much butter.

So, I mean,

A pill wouldn't be able to place that quality of butter.

That's history.

It's rather complicated, too.

There's a fat of milk, great demand today for solids, not fat.

And the medicine you're drinking is pretty good.

We're very good at that.

Reversible, I understand.

But you've got to have, if you couldn't sell the fat out of the milk, there'd be too many in order to produce the solids, not fat.

So they told me some of your doctors are saying that mothers don't get so much cholesterol and they worry so much about arthritis.

I think, frankly, that's the whole business about cholesterol.

I don't think the doctors know nearly as much as they claim because cholesterol seems to lower down stress, be affected far more by stress than it is by diet.

Unless they go to the great extremes.

Everybody in the high terrestrial, you give up age, you give up milk, and you give up butter, and you give up fat, and then the terrestrial doesn't come down.

You go on a vacation, it does.

I had a very high cholesterol.

I used to have a very low cholesterol.

When he was forced for a heart attack, at least around 200, he had high blood pressure.

It's true how people differ in this deal.

His blood pressure was, he was a man of his own.

You would come in and see this.

You know, with all that geniality, he had a terrific temper, and the blood would flow up into his head.

You could just see it.

He could never, I don't think he could ever play poker, but I understand he wasn't very good.

But anyway, on the blood pressure thing, way high.

But his cholesterol was extremely low, maybe 180.

And I have a blood pressure that is the blood pressure of somebody of 30 years of age.

It's about 125 over 75 or something.

But the breast was very high then.

So nobody...

If you have a heart attack, boy, who cares?

You just get over it.

Because this is a sales talk, but here in the United States, I think your average consumption of butter has six, seven pounds per annum.

Where is it?

Forty-five pounds per annum.

Your bottom irons are lower.

See, there it is.

Henry, don't you worry anymore about that.

So let's blow that scene off, then, would you?

You're a very, very cold customer.

Uh, look, I'm going to cross to London, really.

That's my mission.

That's the idea of the conference, right?

But we usually see the thing as well where the guys have an annual test play.

That's great.

Then we're having, before that, we're having this meeting of what we call the five powers, you know, the Prince of Malaysia, Singapore.

Okay.

The Prince of Malaysia, Singapore.

That's very important in my opinion.

I think they're glad even though it's symbolic that the British keep presence on that.

I think it's great that he did it.

Britain is a great country.

They should not just get out in the world and be a little out of it.

I think we don't want to get home down there either.

We like every British person.

I've always told him this, but he knows he now cannot strongly endorse their guts in doing that because it's so easy for them to cater to the public in their home and say, get rid of our Singapore people, let's just concentrate on this little island.

Listen, that isn't what made the British what they are.

The British became a great country by the name of the world in just a little way, right?

And that's why I think he's going to make it.

He's got his problems with his labor and everything.

He's going to make it.

He's a strong man.

He's got five years left.

I haven't known him well, but I've known him.

I met him years ago when I was vice president.

He wasn't in that time in the leadership.

He was written and negotiated and qualified.

He's 17, 18 years.

Well, thank you, Mark.

No problem.

No, he's a great fellow.

He's a great fellow that understands Southeast Asia.

Yes, got to learn to understand it.

Great fellow.

When you're there, if you would, if you would express my very best wishes to the Prime Minister and to he, of course, and National Gallery, and also to the other.

Now, the new Prime Minister of Australia will be there.

No.

No, this is part of the business.

This is part of the business.

Oh, you know who it was?

Yeah.

Oh, I see.

Yeah.

Bill McMahon.

Oh, yes.

He's the controller.

Yeah.

But John Gordon will be there because he's now minister of defense.

One of his cards is there.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm going to give you five minutes.

I didn't know anything about that.

Five minutes.

Yeah.

in the line of inheritance, inherited naturally, said, you know, the tragedy could drown.

Drown.

And then they started a little bit of an aberration.

Well, giving my best, and also, we'll leave that.

Well, we'll leave that.

Well, he was here.

I mean, I saw him.

You're, I mean, it's amazing, really.

You know, you're a president.

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.

I've been here.

Yes, I've been there twice.

What have I read?

No, no, no, he hasn't been there until now.

No, I've been there twice.

I was there in March 1969 and August of last year, September of last year.

I'm an old European.

More than any place else, I am a meditation.

I'm going across because of our relationship with the D.E.C.

It's a crisis coming in the British Negotiation Agency.

So I'm going up to meet Willy Brandt at the Pockadoo and I'm going to meet Columbo as well.

Yeah.

That was exactly two years ago.

My God.

The, uh, the, uh, the, uh...

The fate of politics.

I was here two years ago, and there was a big president and a real prime minister in each one of these countries.

Yeah, that's right.

And he fought and embarrassed everyone.

Yeah, he fought and embarrassed everyone.

And, of course, the remote was, but that was it.

The remote was there, you know.

But I didn't have any of your comic books.

No, not through TV.

Of course, you called the plan.

Well, no, but no, we were doing suspect codes together.

That's right.

And I was very capable of that.

Yeah.

I hope he survives.

Well, I'm glad to have the chance to.

You're looking well.

You're in good health, ain't you?

Oh, sure.

I have to be, you know, you've got to be in this business where you're never going to be sick.

The moment you get sick, you think you're going to die.

That's what I think.

You'll end up with this problem.

But you don't.

Ha!

But I just want to say again that I was quite excited about it.

Well, I appreciate that.

I'm a pro.

Well, there's a resumption on my part, but I thought it was bang on.

It was what you call bang on.

Bang on.

Ah, bang on.

They're all expecting you to, you know, dash here, dash there, and make this argument.

You can't do it.

But then you consider that's a case of those two simple graphs.

Oh, yeah.

They tell the story.

They'll die forever gone.

But the main thing, it isn't handing a war.

Anybody can hand one.

You just get out and lose.

It's handing it in a way that you achieve your goals.

And in this instance, we've got to hand it in a way that South Vietnam has a chance to survive.

Nobody can guarantee it, but we'll give it a chance.

That's how we're doing.

They've made great progress in the last two years.

Who would have thought that they had the audacity to cross the border?

They got backed around some as a counter-blast, but they gave it all up with a count of themselves.

They didn't just run for the chief of service.

But they crossed the border two years ago.

Because they wouldn't even cross the border.

No, no, no.

Well, you couldn't prophesy that they were going to get it?

No.

I think it happened two years ago.

Nobody would like to be prophesied that they were going to get it.

There's a little cake for your wife.

That's the presidential seal with the little bow.

And you can have me also get a pair of my presidential cards.

Are you a golfer?

No.

I quit.

I think we've got your car out here.

I think we're going to Henry's office for a moment.

Oh, yeah.

I was wondering if you would... Oh, we can go through this way.

Oh, no.

I'm going to take you to his car.

I'll have it.

But I hope he wants to let me know his office now.

I want to step in there.

Yeah.

I'll be sure that when he does, when he comes up, you see how pretty the garden is.

There are no roses.

Yeah, the roses are in the summer, but these are your tools.

They're finally coming out.

They're just beginning to come out.

The spring is late here.

Tell me about where you live.

You're going to take a break.

Well, may God be with you.

We appreciate your sturdy help every day.

You read me that the other day, and you've forgotten the top right three paragraphs.

In the last paragraph, you expressed this sentiment.

Well, we appreciate it.

We know, as I said, we know the work we're doing.

We'll do what we can to justify it.

This is the way.

Nixon, Holyoake & Mosbacher on New Zealand and Agriculture

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Also recorded on April 8, 1971

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